Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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Hobbes argues that people won’t naturally obey the sovereign even though they need one. They must be trained into habits of obedience. He explains that people learn obedience from the paterfamilias
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Hobbes based his theory upon the republican Roman ideal of patria potestas, where the father had unquestioned power over the life and death of his children and slaves. Traditional gender roles within the nuclear family prepare people to accept unquestioningly the leadership of the sovereign or dictator.
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After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, when the East German economy was dismantled through the privatization and liquidation of state-owned enterprises, unemployment reached around 40 percent by 1991. The solution? Push women back into the home. Officials reasoned that since women are naturally homemakers, it made sense to reduce unemployment rates by removing women from the workforce.
✏️ Manipulating economic numbers while enforcing new traditional values. 🔗 View Highlight
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If you have a single patriarch with a family wage, it reinforces the traditional patriarchal nuclear family that produces obedience among women and children who depend on the father for material support.
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This creates a patriarchal family dynamic that trains people to be deferential to arbitrary authority, dampens dissent, and deteriorates women’s autonomy and ability to exit abusive situations.
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People want to be esteemed, and in capitalist society, esteem is indexed to wealth — wealth in money but also wealth in time. The tradwife content is wealth porn, but of a different type. It’s all predicated on the existence of a high-earning husband.
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The feeling of looking at the exploitative class relations of capitalism and going “I don’t want to participate in this anymore” could turn into collective organizing, but instead it turns into individual escape fantasies. The tradwife path seems easier and more socially acceptable than joining a political organization and fighting for justice.
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In Eastern Germany and Bulgaria under socialism, the state subsidized childcare. There were child allowances, paid job-protected parental leave, and other pro-family policies. That was a system that supported women to work and have children if they wanted to, and most did both. More importantly, when surveyed, most women reported that they wanted to do both.
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When those enterprises were privatized with the introduction of capitalism, those resources disappeared. Officials tried to push women into the home, thinking, “Instead of the state paying for these services, women will do it for free because that’s what women are supposed to do.”
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he evidence contradicts this. Bulgaria, according to the United Nations, is the fastest-shrinking country in the world due to outmigration and very low birth rates, and this has happened since the introduction of capitalism. We see similar patterns in South Korea and Japan. Once women have economic independence and can make decisions about their lives, having a child means losing that autonomy unless there’s massive state support. Historical evidence suggests that pushing women home without investments like these will reduce birth rates, not raise them.
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We need to understand that what people need most after the basics — like water, shelter, food, health care, and education — is esteem. They need to feel part of a community that loves, admires, and appreciates them.