Feminism and the Family
Marx and Engels also criticize the family within capitalism as an essentially oppressive institution: bourgeois boss oppresses husband, who takes it out on wife, who takes it out on children. Twentieth-century Marxists see the family as the basic unit of consumption in advanced capitalism: families make big purchases (houses, cars, large appliances, etc.), weddings and babies require large outlays of money, etc. Capitalist-controlled media, aided by religion, present marriage and family in a positive light in order to keep up demand for big-ticket items: hence, according to Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, and others, the pervasive "myth of romance".
It is thus no accident that contemporary feminist philosophers are very frequently quite radical in their politics, since much of their theoretical substructure comes from Marx and Engels. Influenced by Marx and Engels and de Beauvoir on one hand and Wollstonecraft on the other, they are suspicious of the usual myths and traditions about love, marriage, and family.
Thus today, a very interesting debate rages among feminists regarding familial obligations. Some feminist philosophers, such as the late Jane English and Judith Thomson, argue for what Christina Sommers, in her article "Philosophers Against the Family", calls a "volunteer theory of obligation", in terms of which no person has any moral obligation to any specific individual except in so far as the obligation has been voluntarily accepted.
Obligations to specific persons are opposed to general duties, which are owed to all persons equally. For example, I have a general duty to refrain from killing anyone; thus I have no special obligation to refrain from killing my parents, since not killing my parents is already forbidden by the general rule. No one is exempt from general duties. But I don’t have a general duty to keep a promise to a specific person; I am obligated to keep my promise only to the specific person I made the promise to, not to everyone in the world. And if I don’t want to be bound by this promise-keeping obligation, I can refrain from making promises. The idea is that I don’t have an obligation to any specific person if I don’t agree or "volunteer" to have it: hence the term "volunteer theory of obligation". Thus, in Sommers’ rather odd usage, "duties" are general, "obligations" specific; and while I volunteer for obligations, I simply have duties. The volunteer theory of obligation is commonly held in contemporary philosophy; however, it has been used by some feminist philosophers to support positions that Sommers finds counter-intuitive, e.g., overzealous support of abortion, and a skewed view of morality in parent-child relations.
The volunteer theory would say, for example, that a person is not morally obligated to keep a promise she was forced to make (so far so good). But Thomson and English extend the volunteer theory to parent-child relations and abortion. Thus according to English’s version of the volunteer theory, a child is not morally obligated to support her aged parent any more than she is morally obligated to support any elderly person (since she did not agree to be born). And according to Thomson, a woman is not morally obligated to carry through a pregnancy caused e.g., by rape or birth-control failure, that she did not volunteer to undertake.
Sommers argues in opposition to the volunteer theory but in agreement with Confucianism and Islam. She says that contemporary feminist philosophers do not properly appreciate the significance of what she calls "special duties" – binding duties we owe to specific individuals whether we or not we agree to be bound by them. Familial duties are paradigms of special duties. Sommers says, for example, that there are special duties towards one’s parents, just because they are one’s parents, whether one likes it or not. The question of whether or not you want or agree to have those duties simply doesn’t arise. Sommers acknowledges that her theory might strike some people as "unfair", since obviously some people end up with a heavier moral burden than others – some people’s parents are especially inconvenient (impoverished, in poor health, psychologically abusive, etc.). But as a general rule, one has duties to parents. Life is seldom fair; some people are just unlucky and moral theories can’t fix that. Sommers also argues, as an extension of her view, that a woman might have special duties to a fetus, just because it is in one’s body, no matter how it got there.
Many philosophers attack Sommers for her alleged defense of repressive and reactionary "family values". I think she has interesting arguments. She has few defenders in philosophy journals, though she has been lionized by the political right wing.
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