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PARTISAN REVIEW
readers are left hanging; having been told that the Family Ideal sup–
ports family tyranny, they are left to look for revolutionary alter–
natives in other places. I had the odd feeling that Pleck was perhaps
deliberate in not spelling out the revolutionary implications of her
analysis of family tyranny and violence. Is it unfair to suggest that
Pleck herself adopted the careful and ambiguous tactics of the suc–
cessful reformers who avoid confrontation by wrapping their revolu–
tionary colors in a banner of ameliorative ambiguity? For it is evi–
dent to the careful reader that Pleck prefers a society in which the
family as we know it has been abolished .
Pleck fails to consider the question of how much domestic
violence there might be in alternative arrangements . She seems
unimpressed that , historically, alternatives to the family are, un–
popular, scattered , and tend to be tyrannical . She does not take up
the possible intrinsic merit of the Family Ideal or its tenaciousness in
human history.
In
characterizing the Family Ideal, Pleck em–
phasizes
authority.
This is to overlook entirely the positive aspects of
the Ideal. Domestic violence is shocking and tragic, not simply
because it violates the criminal law, but because it violates family
ideals of nurture and protectiveness . We are inclined to remove
children from brutal homes and to place them in alternative family
settings , with the hope that those settings will provide the tender
regard their own families should have given them.
Pleck discounts worries about the dangers of public incursions
into the family by police, social workers, and psychiatrists , and she
shows little concern that it is primarily the poor who would be
targeted for strictest regulation. Reading Pleck, one gets little sense
that there are serious questions about state intrusions into family
life . Yet any consideration of domestic violence inevitably leads to
serious moral dilemmas about the rights of family versus the state's
right to further the welfare of its citizens . Surely the existing limi–
tations are not due merely to an historical conspiracy to preserve a
defective status quo.
A closer look at the relation between family violence and the in–
tegrity of the family might have given Pleck pause . As the divorce
rate shows, the family as a social institution is currently very
weak.
The difficulty in getting a divorce was once considered a prime
reason for a high incidence of domestic murder. Why, then , do we
find that easy divorce is accompanied by an
increase
in the incidence
of marital murder? Consider also how the weakening of the family
has adversely affected the potential victims of domestic violence.
