Abolish the Family for a Better Future? Why Healthy Families Still Matter

2 days ago

6 min read

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What happens when we stop asking how to make families healthier and start questioning whether the family itself is worth preserving?

Family relationships can be complicated. They can be a source of love, security, and belonging, but they can also be a source of deep pain. For some people, family means support and connection. For others, it brings up experiences of rejection, conflict, neglect, or trauma.

As a therapist who works with complex trauma and attachment, I understand how much our family experiences can shape us. I'm also estranged from my own family of origin, so I certainly don't believe every family is healthy or that everyone should remain in harmful relationships.

But I do believe there's an important distinction between recognizing that families can cause harm and deciding that the family itself is the problem.

And that distinction is worth paying attention to.

What Does It Mean to Abolish the Family?

In recent years, ideas challenging the traditional family have gained attention in some academic and cultural circles. One example is Sophie Lewis's book, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation.

Lewis questions the traditional family structure, arguing that it can reinforce unequal power dynamics and place too much responsibility for caregiving within individual households. She advocates rethinking how we organize care, raise children, and support one another beyond the immediate family.

These arguments raise important questions about how we care for vulnerable people and how we address unhealthy family dynamics. But they also invite us to consider something bigger: When does critiquing the problems within families become a rejection of the family itself?

There is a difference between helping families become healthier and treating traditional family relationships as something society needs to move beyond.

We should be able to acknowledge family dysfunction without losing sight of what healthy families offer.

Family Is More Than a Source of Potential Harm

Much of the conversation about family today focuses on what can go wrong. We hear about toxic parents, unhealthy attachment, family estrangement, and the importance of setting boundaries. These conversations can be valuable, especially for people who have spent years struggling to understand painful experiences.

But I sometimes wonder whether we're becoming so focused on identifying harm that we're losing sight of the value of working through relationship difficulties.

Not every disagreement is abuse. Not every hurtful interaction means a relationship is beyond repair. And not every imperfect parent is a toxic parent.

Healthy relationships aren't relationships in which nobody ever gets hurt. They're relationships in which people can take responsibility, listen to one another, apologize, make changes, and repair the damage they've caused.

Of course, there are situations where distance or estrangement is necessary for someone's safety and well-being. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But there's a difference between recognizing when a relationship is genuinely harmful and treating disconnection as the default response to relational pain.

We need to make room for both truths: families can cause deep wounds, and healthy family relationships are still worth building and protecting.

Why Marriage and Family Matter to Society

Families aren't just private arrangements between individuals. They're one of the places where we first learn how to live with other people.

Ideally, family is where children learn that they belong, that their choices affect others, and that love involves both care and responsibility. They learn how to navigate conflict, consider someone else's needs, and work through difficult moments with people they love.

Marriage and family can also provide a lasting structure for raising children, sharing responsibilities, caring for aging relatives, and supporting one another through life's challenges.

These relationships help form the foundation of our communities. Families pass down values, teach responsibility, and help prepare the next generation for adulthood.

This doesn't mean every family looks the same or that every household must follow one particular arrangement. It means that close, lasting relationships and committed caregiving have real value.

Institutions can educate children, provide services, and offer important support. But those services don't automatically replace the bond of a parent who knows a child deeply, feels responsible for that child's well-being, and intends to keep showing up throughout their life.

When we talk about strengthening society, shouldn't strengthening families be part of that conversation?

Who Decides What's Best for Children?

Another concern is the growing tension between parental authority and the authority of outside institutions.

Parents are not infallible. They can make mistakes, misunderstand their children, and sometimes cause real harm. Children also need protection when their parents are abusive or neglectful.

But parents generally have a lifelong responsibility for their children that teachers, therapists, doctors, and government officials do not share in the same way.

Professionals can offer valuable knowledge and guidance, but they aren't all-knowing. Their opinions can be influenced by their training, assumptions, and personal biases. Being an expert in one area doesn't mean having the complete picture of a particular child or family.

As a therapist myself, I believe we need to be willing to question professional advice when appropriate. A professional opinion should inform thoughtful decisions, not automatically replace a parent's judgment.

When parents and institutions disagree about what is best for a child, we need to ask difficult questions. What role should parents have in those decisions? When should outside intervention be necessary? And how do we protect children from genuine harm without treating parental involvement as an obstacle?

These questions deserve careful consideration, not automatic assumptions that parents are either always right or inherently suspect.

Breaking Generational Cycles Without Giving Up on Family

One of the reasons I care so deeply about this topic is that I want something different for my own children.

I didn't grow up in a healthy family, and I've experienced family estrangement firsthand. I know that family relationships can be painful and that simply sharing DNA doesn't guarantee safety, love, or connection.

But I don't want my experiences to lead me to believe that family itself is something to avoid. Instead, I want to build the kind of family I wish more people had experienced.

That means learning to respond differently, taking responsibility when I get things wrong, repairing relationships after conflict, and creating a home where my children feel secure, loved, and understood.

It also means accepting that I won't be a perfect parent.

Breaking generational cycles doesn't require perfection. It requires a willingness to recognize unhealthy patterns and work toward something better.

Our children don't need parents who never make mistakes. They need parents who are willing to learn, take responsibility, and keep working to build a secure relationship with them.

The goal shouldn't be to create a world without family difficulties. It should be to help create more families where those difficulties can be addressed, repaired, and overcome.

What Kind of Future Are We Building?

We should absolutely support people who have been hurt by their families. We should help parents become healthier, protect children from abuse, and make it easier for families to access the support they need.

But I don't believe the answer is to devalue marriage, weaken parental responsibility, or treat family relationships as inherently oppressive.

If we want children to grow into adults who can form healthy relationships, care about others, and take responsibility for their choices, we should be investing in the relationships that help them learn those things.

When a family fails a child, we should work toward making sure more children have the healthy, loving families they deserve.

We don't have to pretend families are perfect to recognize their importance. And we don't have to ignore the harm that happens within families to believe that family is still worth fighting for.

The question isn't whether families can be unhealthy. We know they can. The question is whether we want to build a culture that helps families become healthier—or one that increasingly questions whether we need them at all.

That's a conversation worth having.

Listen to the Podcast

In this episode of Roots and Attachment, “Abolish the Family for a Better Future? What?”, I take a closer look at the growing movement to rethink the traditional family, the implications for parental authority and family relationships, and why I believe strengthening healthy families matters for both individuals and society.

As a therapist and someone with personal experience navigating family estrangement, I explore why we can acknowledge the pain families sometimes cause without losing sight of the connection, security, and belonging that healthy family relationships can provide.

If you've ever wondered where the conversation about family is headed—or how we can break generational cycles without giving up on family itself—I hope you'll give it a listen.

Roots and Attachment is a podcast about relationships, attachment, complex trauma, and building healthier connections with ourselves and the people we love.

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