August 2025
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    I'm looking for some books that discuss the capitalist family unit, especially focusing on how it's built to enforce and encourage systematic gender based oppression, particularly with reference to the social reproduction of capitalism through the family unit.

    I'm thinking about books like The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Engels, which is a good start on the topic but quite outdated according to modern anthropology/social science. Preferably with an application of intersectionality, Marxist theory and critical theory.

    Thank you!

    by Chris-P02

    3 Comments

    1. Character_Item_8614 on

      Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy looks at this but by dismantling it and looking at what family structures might look like without capitalism

    2. stella3books on

      “Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother” by Peggy O’Donnell Heffington has a lot of stuff on the different patterns of childcare and community ties, as it relates to women who aren’t moms. It traces the rise of western family-building and family-organizing patterns, and how capitalism sort of chipped away at American family networks until “family” came to mean “the most convenient social unit for capitalist production”.

    3. hmmwhatsoverhere on

      *Feminism for the 99%* by Cinzia Arruzza et al is at least tangentially relevant. 

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