ABSTRACT
Ambitious human minds have dreamed over the millennia of ways for parents to shed the task of childcare, in favor of social parenting. Some commentators argue that Plato was not seriously advocating a collectivist society: it was more of a playful warning, an early and subtle dystopia. Yet others see the powerful rationality of Plato's vision suggesting a mental exercise meant to be taken seriously. In 1972 a new prime minister came to power, the American-educated Olof Palme. American "maternalists" active in the Democratic Party gained control of the Federal Women's and Children's bureaus during the 1930s and took prominent places in shaping the New Deal. It is true that the "maternalist" form of social organization had its own internal contradictions, which left it vulnerable to criticism. The dominant Swedish values of "individualism and pluralism" threaten to overwhelm the ideal of intergenerational solidarity on which the Swedish welfare state itself had been built.
