There is a family crisis. However, this crisis was not triggered by the ‘erosion of traditional identities’ or by the fight for equal rights for LGBTQIA+ people and migrants. Rather, it stems from a larger systemic crisis in which the family, as the central institution of a privatized system of social reproduction, has failed. Liza Mattutat argues that this failure could pave the way for a society centered on care if we choose solidarity over right-wing agitation and hate.
*
In the fall of 2019, Giorgia Meloni literally got the masses dancing. The DJ duo MEM & J remixed part of her October 19, 2019, speech in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome and added a dance beat. The track became a media phenomenon throughout Italy, garnering millions of views on YouTube within a month. However, the ironic intention of the DJs was lost, and Italian teenagers danced to the song while chanting in unison: “Io sono Giorgia, sono una donna, sono una madre, sono una cristiana” (“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am a Christian”).
The DJs had cut out the punchline of Meloni’s self-description, though: “Sono italiana” (“I am Italian”). Meloni’s speech was really about invoking the family as the core of national identity, which the Italian right wing sees as threatened by demands for equality from queer parents. This was in reference to the discussion about whether homosexual couples should be allowed to register as ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ instead of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ on their children’s personal documents. Meloni expressed this national identity that must be defended in her viral slogan: Woman, mother, Christian = Italian. She concluded combatively: “Non me lo toglierete!” (“You will not take that away from me!”).
Right-wing instrumentalization of ‘the family’
Right-wing movements have long exploited the family for ideological purposes. Consider the cult of motherhood in National Socialism, for example. However, some of the ways the extreme right is using the family today are new. In Europe, it is noteworthy that right-wing parties in power are focusing on the compatibility of family and career, departing somewhat from traditional images of women. In the US, it is notable that some pronatalist groups are presenting themselves as humanitarian and openly advocating for reproductive technology. They claim that a global population collapse is imminent and assert that their policies are about nothing less than the preservation of humanity.
These changes are occurring because even the extreme right must respond to the fact that the family is in crisis. However, this is not due to equal rights for queer parents or an influx of migrant families, as the right would have us believe. Rather, it is due to a political and economic situation in which the breadwinner model has come to an end. Real wages are stagnating, the cost of living is rising, and all adults must engage in wage labor. Consequently, care work is neglected. This is reflected in the neglect of children and those in need of care, as well as the increasing number of exhaustion and depression cases among caregivers (“parental burnout”).
When the far right forms the government, it must consider that few families can live on one income. ‘Back to the kitchen’ is no longer an option. This is why right-wing governing parties in Europe are committed to helping women balance family life and a career. In Hungary, for example, Viktor Orbán contrasted high child benefits and other transfer payments with massive tax breaks for families to promote women’s employment. At the 5th Budapest Demographic Summit, Meloni named Orbán as a role model for her family policy. When she took office, Meloni promised to expand childcare with EU funds. However, delays caused by administration and bureaucracy are now threatening to derail this goal.
Displacing the socio-economic crisis with a culture war
However, since the right has nothing substantial to offer in terms of solving the economic causes of the crisis facing families, it is resorting to a culture war. This is evident in their opposition to migration, massive attacks on women’s reproductive rights, and anti-LGBTQ+ positions.
At the instigation of the PiS, abortion has only been legal in Poland since 2022 in cases of rape. In Hungary, women can invoke a personal crisis situation up to the 12th week of pregnancy. However, since 2022, they are required to listen to the embryo’s heartbeat before having an abortion. In Italy, since 2024, pro-life organizations have been permitted to establish counseling centers in hospitals where they use moral pressure and harassment to dissuade women from having abortions. The German Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is calling for abortion to be permitted only on criminal or medical grounds, and for mandatory counseling sessions prior to the procedure to be geared toward dissuading women from having an abortion. The party claims this approach serves a ‘culture of welcoming children.’
This choice of words reveals the ideological foundation of right-wing family policy. Right-wing parties largely reject migration as a solution to demographic problems, such as the shortage of skilled workers and the nursing care crisis. Instead, they are preoccupied with raising the birth rate. The birth rate has been declining in industrialized countries for decades. In 2022, the average was 1.51 children per woman, which is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 necessary to prevent the population from shrinking. Given these figures, the right wing fears a loss of significance and power for white elites. This fear is reflected in conspiracy ideologies such as the Great Replacement and the allegedly imminent ‘death of the people.’
The ‘traditional family’ under attack?
According to these ideologies, the imagined homogeneous population of white Christians would be deliberately replaced by migrants and their descendants. This is why the right wing is pushing for a selective pro-natalist family policy that promotes national, heterosexual families and discriminates against migrant families while seeking to restrict immigration. “‘New Germans?’ Let’s make them ourselves” was the slogan on an Alternative for Germany (AfD) election poster for the 2017 federal election. In the background was a beaming, pregnant, blonde, white woman.
While the reproduction of heterosexual families is promoted, the right wing makes life difficult for queer families. In Italy, sperm donation and artificial insemination are only permitted for couples consisting of a man and a woman. Despite recent successes, the parental status of lesbian mothers who have not given birth to their children remains precarious. In late 2024, the Italian government passed a law criminalizing the use of surrogacy abroad. This effectively prevents gay couples from having children. Since 2020, Hungary’s constitution has defined the mother as a woman and the father as a man. It also states that children have the right to an identity corresponding to their birth sex. The ‘traditional family’ is supposed to protect against the alleged dangers of ‘gender ideology.’
As with the policies of the far right in general, its family policy cannot be explained purely in economic terms or solely as a means of serving the interests of voters. Rather, it translates widespread feelings of anger and powerlessness about the economic situation among its voters into identity politics. It invokes the ‘traditional family,’ stirs up sentiment against migrant and queer parents, and thereby initiates a culture war that is politically useful to it.
Family abolitionism
Such misanthropic projections must be countered with solutions based on solidarity that address the root causes of the family crisis. Proposals for these solutions have been put forward in recent years under the polemical slogan “family abolitionism.” Authors such as Sophie Lewis, Kathi Weeks, and Michelle O’Brien argue that the current burden on families stems from a systemic contradiction between production and reproduction.
Capitalism is based on the exploitation of labor. Therefore, capitalists have an interest in keeping the costs of labor as low as possible. However, the costs of restoring labor cannot be reduced too much. If people eat poorly, sleep too little, and do not take care of each other, they will be unable to work. Historically, the family institution defused this contradiction by performing reproductive tasks such as raising children, cooking, and cleaning without pay. Since women traditionally perform this work, the system is collapsing due to the rising female employment rate.
Currently, the right in Europe is attempting to stabilize the situation by invoking traditional values and gender roles while making concessions to economic reality. Family abolitionists, on the other hand, are calling for an end to the privatized system of social reproduction through comprehensive collectivization of care tasks. “What is needed,” write Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh in their book “The Anti-Social Family” (1982), “is not to build up an alternative to the family – new forms of household that would fulfill all the needs that families are supposed to fulfill today – but to make the family less necessary, by building up all sorts of other ways of meeting people’s needs”
Structural and material conditions for alternatives
Therefore, the challenge is not to prescribe alternatives to the family, but rather to consider what structural and material conditions would enable the collective development of such alternatives. Kathi Weeks proposes a series of reforms aimed at alleviating the strain on family relationships. These reforms include the introduction of an unconditional basic income to reduce financial dependence among family members, a reduction in the workweek to 30 hours to allow more time for caregiving, universal health insurance independent of employment or family status, and affordable housing that accommodates various living arrangements, from single households to large residential projects.
There is a crisis in the family. However, it is not triggered by equal rights for LGBTQIA+ people or migrants, nor by a ‘breakdown of traditional identities.’ Rather, the crisis consists of the family’s failure as the central institution of a privatized system of social reproduction. This crisis could lead to a care-centered society if we reject right-wing agitation and hatred and embrace solidarity-based politics.