The Baffler #66 Jan./Feb. 2023

IN THE WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1990), the late, great Barbara Ehrenreich looked back on the rise of “aggressively ‘profamily’” activists of the 1980s. “They have invoked ‘the family’ when they trample on the rights of those who hold actual families together, that is, women,” she wrote. “They have used it to justify racial segregation and the formation of white-only, ‘Christian’ schools. And they have brought it out, along with flag and faith, to silence any voices they found obscene, offensive, disturbing, or merely different.” To this day, conservatives continue to manipulate and weaponize the term for their own ends. “Pro-family” rhetoric is used to disguise a morality that’s really about the preservation of the “traditional” order, about perpetuating a culture where the biological mother, father, child relationship is considered supreme, worthy of idolatry and protection, and must be maintained at all costs. It’s something sacrosanct that precludes any arguments against, whatever they might be. This issue aims to address the multifaceted complexities of family and the ways in which it’s used: for corporations and power, for health and wealth, for bodily autonomy and oppression.