We are living through what many call a “crisis of the family”, delayed marriage, declining birth rates and housing unaffordability preventing traditional family formation. Rather than cultural decay, Engels’ insight that family structures are economically determined, not natural, better explains these shifts than most contemporary morality driven analysis.
Image description: A diptych image showing: left panel,The cover of Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884 edition with its distinctive typography) Right panel, A classical painting of Athena’s birth from Zeus’s head – Athena emerging fully armed while Zeus sits enthroned. It provides concrete illustration of how “family as technology” operates – Zeus literally manufacturing kinship to consolidate patriarchal power, eliminating any maternal claims or competing lineages.
Family, Property, Power
Engels’ masterwork The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) denaturalizes the family. We are building on the same by exploring mythological traditions revealing how kinship serves power rather than biology. Greek mythology’s divine family structure mirrors earthly politics- Zeus’s patriarchal rule depends on strategic marriages and violent overthrows, while Athena’s birth from Zeus’s head eliminates maternal claims entirely. Hindu traditions present similar negotiations: the Mahabharata’s central conflict emerges from inheritance disputes, while Krishna’s complex marriages serve larger dharmic purposes. These stories reveal family as a technology for organizing social and economical relations rather than natural bonds.
Drawing on Lewis Henry Morgan’s anthropological research, Engels traced historical development from primitive communalism to capitalist society. While his anthropological claims have been discredited, his insights about relationships between economic systems and family structures remain resonant. Engels’ core argument that nuclear family isn’t natural but historically specific to economic relations, challenges capitalism’s most naturalized institution. Monogamous marriage emerged not from romantic love but from ensuring clear inheritance lines for private property. Women’s oppression stems from exclusion from productive labour and reduction to reproducers of legitimate heirs.
This framework finds parallels in 20th century Indian contexts, where writers like Premchand, Ismat Chughtai, and Mahadevi Verma critiqued patriarchal joint family systems, arranged marriages and women’s confinement. Their work revealed how traditional kinship structures served caste hierarchy and economic control rather than natural bonds. The joint family system, often romanticized as authentically Indian- actually functioned to maintain property within upper-caste lineages while controlling women’s sexuality and labour.
Anti-colonial movements faced complex tensions: defending “traditional” family values against colonial criticism while simultaneously challenging oppressive practices within those structures. Intellectuals like Ambedkar understood how caste endogamy and family purity rules maintained social hierarchy, while the Progressive Writers’ Movement explicitly connected family oppression to broader inequalities.
Today’s “crisis of the family” reflects not just economic impossibility but the breakdown of mechanisms that once made traditional family life feel natural and desirable. When young people can’t afford homes, when childcare costs exceed wages, when climate anxiety makes reproduction feel irresponsible, both Western nuclear family ideals and traditional joint family expectations falter.
Contemporary feminists have noted Engels’ limitations- his heteronormative assumptions and binary gender framework do feel outdated. Yet his fundamental insight that family forms are shaped by economic relations proves remarkably prescient. The gig economy, student debt, housing costs and climate anxiety create new collective living arrangements and alternative relationship structures echoing Engels’ vision of communal social arrangements. When people joke about “polycules” being more affordable than nuclear families, they unconsciously acknowledge the economic basis of intimate life Engels identified.
Before we dive into this brutally honest round, remember: every family structure is political, every choice is economic, and every ‘never’ reveals the systems shaping our most intimate decisions. Ready to see how deep the rabbit hole of family mythology goes? Take the challenge – let’s play
Never Have I Ever… Family Edition:
- Never have I ever… wondered if what I call “love” is partly just economic convenience.
- Never have I ever… avoided having kids/ wondered if I want kids because I can’t afford a bigger place (among other things).
- Never have I ever… judged someone’s family choices without considering their bank account.
- Never have I ever… realized my “relationship goals” are actually economic arrangements.
- Never have I ever… wondered if my parents got married because that’s just what people did back then!
- Never have I ever… noticed that my social circle’s marriages look suspiciously like business mergers.