Also unlike other patriarchal institutions where power relations are legible and segmentary (bonds can be cleanly broken and remade without disturbing power structure) within a family power exists as an entanglement of lives. Quantum, not classical.
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The presence of a strong functional emotional aspect to your entanglement with your family (or equivalent pack) is not a constitutive cause but an emergent effect. Ie you can’t “substitute” the emotional “need” like backfilling a job when an employee quits.
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Emotions emerge when the family entanglement begin to function. Whether healthy or unhealthy (co-dependency, exploitation), once this kicks in, politics cannot easily split the pack. You have to appeal to its interests as a whole.
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Though the family may have a legible public “leader” (say a working father) it is naive to assume that this leader has de facto power or that the interests of the pack coincide with those of any one member.
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This was one of Hannah Arendt’s key insights: in the traditional family, the individual power of the free male head stops at the threshold of the home. Once he steps in, he may enjoy more comforts, but everybody: housewives, children, slaves, male head are fully constrained.
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So when voting members of a functioning family vote, they vote the interests of the whole (I’d be *very* surprised if more than a tiny % of married couples with kids voted diff from each other, and it is significant that young people usually leave home when they can first vote)
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Replying to @vgr
I've known several that were openly politically divergent and even more that were privately divergent. My intuition is opposite of yours. I suspect it's actually quite common.
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Replying to @danlistensto @vgr
same, though I don't know what I'd bet on re: %. I think maybe... 20% divergent? less than random (~50%) but not vanishingly uncommon
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Replying to @visakanv @danlistensto
I’ll modify that claim to “length weighted” Strongly divergent couples are unlikely to even meet let alone date stably long enough to marry. If/when they do, I suspect one will gradually convert or politics will become a serious faultline.
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Replying to @vgr @danlistensto
I imagine in many of the subset of cases with differing politics, one partner (usually the wife?) just hides their politics and parrots their partner's openly but votes differently in private
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Or they’re resourced and selfish enough that it’s a game to them because they’re not personally affected. Or they’re shielded and have a “no politics at dinner table” type family culture.
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In my family my wife researches ballot and tells me how to vote. Occasionally flags minor ones where I might differ from her.
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