Abstract
Until fairly recently, in the West, the supremacy of the father in the home was taken for granted. Even though philosophers as far apart historically as John Locke and Karl Marx had protested against the abuses of paternal authoritarianism (Marx in particular calling for the total elimination of the patriarchal, bourgeois family), it has not been until this century that patriarchal thinking seems to have been fatally undermined. Today the role of the father has changed to such an extent that the question of who ought to be considered the highest authority in the nuclear family may be considered open. Gregory Bateson in fact asserts candidly that “the American family is a unit with imperfectly defined leadership and a spectrum of opinions. Neither parent is in a position of recognized final authority.” Indeed, he continues, the “outstanding parent” in a given family
…must overtly act as though he or she were orchestrating a diversity of opinions—and must perform this function not with a silent baton, but playing actually in the orchestra, exerting an integrating influence only by his or her contribution to the total sequence of sound (Bateson and Ruesch, p. 162).
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© 1982 Plenum Press, New York
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Struckmeyer, F.R. (1982). Authority and the Family: Some Considerations. In: Cafagna, A.C., Peterson, R.T., Staudenbaur, C.A. (eds) Philosophy, Children, and the Family. Child Nurturance, vol 1. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3473-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3473-6_3
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