Father Figuring

[morgan_dhu]

As a Canadian, I have been watching the current American electoral process very closely, for reasons that should be obvious. As former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once said, in speaking about the Canada-U.S. relationship, “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” The elephant is doing a lot more than twitching and grunting these days, and no longer seems all that friendly and even-tempered, so it is, I believe, even more important for the mouse to pay close attention, not just to what the elephant is doing, but to anything that can shed some light on why the elephant is doing it.

In this context, I have lately been hearing a great deal about George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of cognitive linguistics who has made a considerable study of the language of politics. He has been getting a fair amount of media time of late with his discussions of framing in political language. (For anyone who has missed this, here is an interview with Lakoff that discusses framing.)

Lakoff has also theorised that much political thought in the United States is influenced by the “Nation as Family” metaphor, in which both liberals and conservatives see the nation as a family, with the government as the parent and the citizens as children. One of the results of thinking about politics within this metaphorical framework is that personal and family values, goals and morality are mapped onto the policies and actions of the state.

Lakoff observes that, while both liberals and conservatives use this metaphor, they rely on two different models of the family, which he calls the strict father model and the nurturant parent model; therefore, the two main political constituencies in the U.S. see the nation as two very different kinds of families – which in turn means that they have different expectations of the policies and actions of their governments.

Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones — those who have already become wealthy or at least self-reliant — and those who are on the way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.
Full article here.

This leads me to the recently published book Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values. by Michael Adams.

This book was written by the founder of the Canadian public opinion polling firm I work for, and is based on research we and our research partners in other countries have been conducting for more than a decade into the predominant social values in a number of countries, including Canada and the United States. I’m not shilling the book here, I honestly think the research is of some importance to an understanding of a number of social trends in both Canada and the U.S.

Adams argues, based on more than a decade of research into social values in the United States, that there is a growing trend towards an acceptance of both traditional patriarchal authority and hierarchical social structures in the United States today.

One of the most striking items we have been tracking during the past decade addresses Americans’ orientation to traditional patriarchal authority. In 1992, 1996 and 2000, we asked Americans to strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree with the statement, “The father of the family must be master in his own house.”

In 1992, 42 percent of Americans agreed (either strongly or somewhat) with this statement. The number seemed high at the time (1992 wasn’t so very long ago), but we hadn’t, as they say, seen nothing yet. Support for the Father-knows-best credo was actually on the rise. In 1996, 44 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, and in 2000, a full 49 percent of our sample – almost half the population – agreed that Dad should be boss; this is in spite of the frontal assault on patriarchal authority waged by Homer Simpson and Bill Clinton during the 1990s.

This growing acceptance of traditional patriarchal authority is truly remarkable – and seriously divergent with the patterns in other advanced industrial nations. But it is not only patriarchal authority that is enjoying increased acceptance among many Americans. When we asked Americans in 1996 whether it was better for one leader to make decisions in a group or whether leadership should be more fluid, 31 percent agreed with the more hierarchical position that a single leader should call the shots. In 2000, the proportion agreeing with the hierarchical model had shot up seven points to 38 percent. These Americans were becoming more and more willing to fall in line and do what the boss tells them to do, and this was before their president and commander-in-chief began to rally them for a post-9/11 war on terrorism.

Here, then, is the link between Lakoff and Adams – Lakoff suggests that conservatives in America see the nation/family in terms of a strict father who disciplines his citizen/children into his model of self-reliant individualism, and punishes those who fail to achieve this goal, and Adams presents evidence supporting the view that an increasing number of Americans find the “strict father” family model to be comfortable – and perhaps even comforting. I do not argue a causal link here – it is impossible to say, given the available data, if the observed increase in the acceptance of patriarchy and hierarchy is supporting a move toward the political right in America, or is merely documenting shifts in social values resulting from an overall trend to the right that is also reflected in political ideology and policy.

However, if both the theory and the research do in fact reflect the reality of American politics and society, then the current rightist administration under Bush may not be an aberration, but a real reflection of where American society, and the United States as a sovereign entity, is headed. And if this is so, then it may also suggest that those in the U.S. seeking to counter this trend may need to focus on not only on political action, but also on social movements such as the feminist movement to influence the values that may well be feeding the march to the right.

Comments

[plastic-ansible.livejournal.com]

"And if this is so, then it may also suggest that those in the U.S. seeking to counter this trend may need to focus on not only on political action, but also on social movements such as the feminist movement to influence the values that may well be feeding the march to the right."

This can be interpreted as both a call to action and a call to stop activist work to placate the right. Can you clarify and, if you think action is important, what do you suggest? What about the backlash against feminists that enables people to blame the "erosion of values" on elusive women's rights? I'm concerned that feminism itself, however misunderstood, becomes the tool and fuel of the right under some circumstances.

One point about Lakoff is that he has a pretty homogeneous model of the family upon which to base his political ideas. You've got another binary of authoritarian/nurturing parenting styles that could bear a reality check. I personally think that social movements that advocate choices among the broad range of parenting/family structures that exist (absent, single, nuclear, extended, intentional, etc.) would be a place to motivate change in public consciousness and take us beyond that dichtomy into some real choices. I also think that valuing parenting as a fulltime job with salary and benefits would raise parenting style consciousness.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

This can be interpreted as both a call to action and a call to stop activist work to placate the right. Can you clarify and, if you think action is important, what do you suggest?

I don't presume to voice a call to action to Americans - as much as I worry deeply about the effects that political events in the U.S. have on the rest of the world, it's up to Americans to decide what kind of government they want. That said, in any situation, I would never suggest placating the right, and particularly the kind of right that seems to be taking hold in the U.S. - one that is not just capitalist and imperialist (as if that isn't enough, but also destructive of human rights and freedoms - religious, sexual, reproductive, political, civil and just about any other category I can think of.

If there is a link of any kind between the upsurge of patriarchal and authoritarian values in American society, and the dominance of right-wing ideology in American politics, then it seems to me that if one wants to reverse the right-wing political trend - and I would be delighted to see this happen - then action is required not only within the political arena, but also in ways that challenge patriarchal and hierarchical systems and values wherever they are found in society.

By suggesting that (given that there is something to Lakoff's views and that there is in fact a link between patriarchal values and right-wing politics) American left-wing political activists might need "to influence the values that may well be feeding the march to the right," I mean that challenging patriarchal systems and beliefs with the intent of creating both a wider definition of families, and a more egalitarian approach to family roles in all family models, might also weaken the need to have that father figure holding the reins of government. I don't know enough about American society to suggest potential strategies, but I suspect there are many levels on which such activism can occur, from public education to offering new images through popular cultural products to reviving the consciousness-raising techniques of second-wave feminism to supporting pagan mother-based religions and so on. And of course, all of that comes in conjunction with political activism on both local and national fronts.

I am not certain what part the feminist backlash (which seems to be worst in the U.S.) plays in this. Again, the available data is not suffiecent to say whether the feminist backlash is a result of an increase in patriarchal values, or if both are indications of something else going on in American society. But, going back to the topic of framing, blaming feminism for an "erosion of values" begs the question - which I rarely see addressing in such debates - of whose values, and whether it might not be a good thing that those particular values are in fact eroding - if they are - to allow the development of a more just and egalitarian society.

I suspect the right has mounted such an attack on feminism because they know that feminism (sidestepping the issue of feminisms for now) has the potential to undermine the belief system they depend on to keep their soldiers, in and out of uniform, in line.

You make a good point about the binary oppositions of strict father/nurturant parent in Lakoff's models. I suspect it's part and parcel of what you have said elsewhere about the binary aspects of political thought in the U.S. - the model assumes two and only two family forms because the politics assumes two and only two political stances. So even though it's not a good model of real-life families, it may still work as a model within the political sphere.

Which leads me to what you say here: I personally think that social movements that advocate choices among the broad range of parenting/family structures that exist (absent, single, nuclear, extended, intentional, etc.) would be a place to motivate change in public consciousness and take us beyond that dichtomy into some real choices.

I think you're absolutely right, and this is indeed one of the kinds of activism that I think can be an approach to changing the patriarchal/authoritarian/right-wing trend in American politics and society.

And in my personal opinion, that would be a very good thing.