THE SUBVERSIVE FAMILY

by Ferdinand Mount

Dispels modern myths about love and marriage--such as the idea that romantic love began with the troubadours--promoted by various ideologues, and argues for an understanding of the family as the most durable and natural of all human institutions.

Genres: Family

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Ferdinand Mount was born in 1939. For many years he was a columnist at the Spectator and then the Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. In between, he was head of the Downing Street Policy Unit and then editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He is now a prize-winning novelist and author of, most recently, the bestselling memoir Cold Cream. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Adrian Colesberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another one of those books that's against the grain of contemporary scholarship. Mount's thesis is so radically divergent from the modern cult of individuality that it just couldn't be recognized for the brilliant work that it was.
His thesis is that corporations, establishment churches, states all equally hate the family and have striven over the past several hundreds of years to dislodge the individual from its clutches.
The family makes individuals selfish and gives them an allegiance more pulling than the church or the state or the corporation or the army. Therefore, the effort to ennoble the individual over the family is really a social entrepreneurship by large, bodies seeking unquestioning loyalty from the individuals they rely on.
This makes one wonder how much anti-sex propaganda is really just anti-family. Because there's nothing more pro-family than sex.
If you want to briefly test this theory, reread Corinthians. Paul is very clear in his logic about why you shouldn't get married. It's not about sex being dirty. It's about avoiding the ties of family when you should really be thinking about the church.
Interesting stuff.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Subversive Family poses an interesting idea: that the nuclear family unit is a threat to hegemonic institutions. And as a result, religious and political power is hostile to family, although eventually it realizes its powerlessness and attempts to coopt things like marriage and child-rearing.