ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud used the phrase 'the romance of the family' to denote a child's fantasy about parents who are different – better born, or simply better – than his real ones; that is, the child wishes to become part of an idealized family. For instance, Lynn Hunt has argued in The Family Romance of the French Revolution that the revolutionary order during the French Revolution confirmed elements of the family dynamics outlined by Freud. This chapter deals with the powerful ideology of the communist family which, too, represented an idealized kinship structure for generations of young people. It considers how four women whole-timers, all of whom were married to other whole-timers, narrated their experiences of communist and biological families, coupledom, Party life, and old age. The women are Vimla Dang from Punjab, Murtazai Shakeel from Hyderabad, Kondapalli Koteswaramma from Telangana, and Usha Dutta Verma from Bengal.
