These horror stories of children being snuffed out or stunted by idiotic, incompetent or just criminally insane parents should make us focus on the inadequacy, the cruel isolation of the nuclear family. This fragile "unit of society" is very much in need of "social engineering."
As a democratic socialist I find a hint of the solution in the Israeli "kibbutz"- a sort of extended family as well as an economic unit. Child abuse, for example, would become almost impossible when there are multiple mothers and fathers caring for and watching over ALL the communal children. Children will no longer be seen as some one couple's PRIVATE PROPERTY and responsibility.
To be sure, there will be no economic privilege– only shared wealth- in this socialist community. The present bourgeois family system is to blame for much mental illness.
Read Engel's "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State."
As Hillary Clinton said : "It takes a village to raise a child."
As a democratic socialist I find a hint of the solution in the Israeli "kibbutz"- a sort of extended family as well as an economic unit. Child abuse, for example, would become almost impossible when there are multiple mothers and fathers caring for and watching over ALL the communal children. Children will no longer be seen as some one couple's PRIVATE PROPERTY and responsibility.
To be sure, there will be no economic privilege– only shared wealth- in this socialist community. The present bourgeois family system is to blame for much mental illness.
Read Engel's "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State."
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| Link to book review |
( Comment on article in Houston Chronicle: "Sentencing for man who kept 4 sons in filthy home", Dec.30, 2014 )
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Ron