"Utopian Families"

by Brenner, Johanna (2000)

Key Passage

"Instead of a political focus on protecting and supporting families, we should argue for expanding, supporting, and reviving communities, and investing resources in local, democratically-controlled institutions for providing care. The entry (both chosen and forced) of women into paid work has drastically undermined the basis for traditional community: the unpaid labour of women. The crisis of care-giving and the burdens on individual family households are a compelling point of entry for a pre-figurative politics which proposes new kinds of sharing relationships and new kinds of public places: like co-housing, community gardens, day-care co-operatives, democratized schools and recreation centres, etc." p. 142 (p.142)