[...] Obviously, the family has long been a source of coercion and domination of women. But it’s also been a way of dominating men. First because parental control over women’s mating choices was also a way of controlling young men, and much later in history, because men’s responsibility for women has kept their shoulder to the grindstone, so to speak. The family regulates and polices its members but also protects them in some ways. It’s a site of struggle and accommodation as well as a site of control. Families have been shaped by and for the existing hierarchies of societies but sometimes they have changed in ways that weaken or challenge those hierarchies.

I also think we need to distinguish between personal and structural male dominance. When a man works extra hours every week to support a stay-at-home wife, it’s hard to say he is oppressing her, even though this social practice reinforces women’s secondary place in society and even his own wife’s sense of dependence on his good will.