ABSTRACT
The family context has long been a source of perplexity for liberal theories. How can a theory committed to individual freedom and choice make sense of an institution built upon mutual obligation and love? The traditional solution was to hold a distinction between two separate realms of life: the private and the public. According to this view shielding the individual against the coercion of state power calls for a recognition of the family as a private sphere beyond the reach of state intervention. By granting privacy rights to the family we help create a protected sphere in which individuals enjoy the freedom to exercise their autonomy. In other words, the family should serve as a private sanctuary of individual freedom, safe from intervention by government. Such was the traditional story told to us by liberal theory. The fallacy in this story was brought to light by feminists who unravelled the violence and coercion some members of the family (i.e., women and children) had to endure under the veil of family privacy.1 They exposed a potential conflict between the need to insulate family relations from the power of government and a commitment to safeguard the autonomy of the individual members of the family. Feminist writers argued that within a sphere cordoned off as ‘private’ and removed from state intervention, family members, including children, remain individuals who may have or who may lack rights to appeal to the state. The challenge that we face today is to find a way to reconcile the doctrine of family privacy with the basic aspiration of a liberal state to enhance the autonomy of its individual members.2
