1840: paris
alexis de tocqueville analyzes
the politics of the family
it has been universally remarked that in our
time the several members of a family stand
upon an entirely new footing toward each oth-
er, that the distance which formerly separated
a father from his sons has been lessened, and
that paternal authority, if not destroyed, is at
least impaired.
something analogous to this, but even
more striking, may be observed in the United
states. in america, the family, in the roman
and aristocratic signification of the word, does
not exist. all that remains of it are a few ves-
tiges in the first years of childhood, when the
father exercises, without opposition, that abso-
lute domestic authority which the feebleness
of his children renders necessary and which
their interest, as well as his own incontestable
superiority, warrants. But as soon as the young
american approaches manhood, the ties of fil-
ial obedience are relaxed day by day: master of
his thoughts, he is soon master of his conduct.
in america there is, strictly speaking, no ado-
lescence: at the close of boyhood the man ap-
pears, and begins to trace out his own path.
it would be an error to suppose that this
is preceded by a domestic struggle in which
the son has obtained by a sort of moral vio-
lence the liberty that his father refused him.
The same habits, the same principles which
impel the one to assert his independence,
predispose the other to consider the use of
that independence as an incontestable right.
The former does not exhibit any of those
rancorous or irregular passions which disturb
men long after they have shaken off an es-
tablished authority; the latter feels none of
that bitter and angry regret which is apt to
survive a bygone power. The father foresees
the limits of his authority long beforehand,
and when the time arrives he surrenders it
without a struggle: the son looks forward to
the exact period at which he will be his own
master, and he enters upon his freedom with-
out precipitation and without effort, as a pos-
session which is his own and which no one
seeks to wrest from him.
Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go
according to any rules. They’re not like aches or
wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that
won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1930
direct appeal to the mass of the governed: as
men are united together, it is enough to lead the
foremost—the rest will follow. This is equally
applicable to the family, as to all aristocracies
which have a head.
among aristocratic nations, social institu-
tions recognize, in truth, no one in the family
but the father; children are received by society
at his hands; society governs him, he governs
them. Thus the parent has not only a natural
right, but he acquires a political right to com-
mand them: he is the author and the support of
his family, but he is also its constituted ruler.
in democracies, where the government
picks out every individual singly from the mass
to make him subservient to the general laws of
the community, no such intermediate person is
required: a father is there, in the eye of the law,
only a member of the community, older and
richer than his sons.
perhaps the subdivision of estates which
democracy brings with it contributes more
than anything else to change the relations ex-
isting between a father and his children. When
the property of the father of a family is scanty,
