Utopian Families

Abstract

In two great utopian novels of the 1970s, Woman on the Edge of Time and The Dispossessed, Marge Piercy and Ursula LeGuin drew on anarchist, that is, radically democratic collectivist ideas while exploring in depth those areas of life that have been feminism's particular focus. They imagined how children would be parented and educated, whether gender would even exist, how individuals would experience and express sexual desire, what human relationships would be like. Both novels assumed, as did feminists of the time, that the privatized, heterosexual nuclear family household was antithetical to radically democratic, egalitarian social relations. They imagined worlds where gender was no longer a central social category, where homosexual desire was treated no differently from heterosexual desire, and where monogamous relationships were not mandated but freely chosen. They envisioned children and parents embedded in a supportive, democratic community, men and women equally involved in care-giving, the essential chores/pleasures of daily life (cooking, eating, laundry, etc.) taking place in communal rather than private spaces. Their concepts of parenting and of education challenged dominant ideas about children's need to be protected from the demands of the adult world. Education ought to be based in learning by doing as children participated in meaningful work. They envisioned more democratic, less authoritarian relationships between adults and children. Challenging the idea of a benevolent necessity for adult control, they argued that children had much greater capacities for self-regulation and responsible decision making than adults gave them credit for. They also argued that involving children in productive work had to begin early, so kids would appreciate the pleasures and rewards of contributing to the common good. In a society where labour is organized through profoundly democratic decision making and for meeting human needs, workplace 'efficiency' would encourage, even demand, making a place for apprenticeship - not to mention flexible (and shorter) working hours to free people up for activities of nurture, leisure, and citizenship. These utopian visions grew out of some of the core struggles of second-wave feminism, particularly its radical liberationist wing. Compared to feminists today, feminists then, facing a patriarchal family/household system that appeared firmly entrenched, felt more free to reject the family wholesale. And, in a period of relative prosperity and economic security, they were also more free to experiment with alternative forms of living.