ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that many feminists have failed to appreciate the powerful link between feminism and the genuine valuing of families. The caricature of feminism as fundamentally antifamily is effective in so many contexts because it exaggerates certain tendencies of second-wave feminist theories that unlike recent feminist celebrations of the nurturing learned in families often take direct critical aim at institutions central to family life. Theorists who wish to show the social and political importance of feminist thought for families must display the richness and complexity of feminisms varied stands on the family. Shulamith Firestones The Dialectic of Sex attacks the compatibility of motherhood with autonomous womanhood more insistently than virtually any other feminist text of the period. As Jean Elshtain argues, however shakily and imperfectly, family life helps to preserve an alternative to the impersonal and often brutal values that tend to dominate social and economic institutions external to it.
