Guest Blog by Heide Goettner-Abendroth
Communal child raising is as old as humanity and not at all a new idea. The problems came with the nuclear family that started with the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago. Before that child raising in extended families always was communal, and women shared this task.
The question is whether the group of women lived in a repressive extended familiy, or a non-repressive one. The European patriarchal extended familiy was extremely repressive towards women and children, but in non-patriarchal extended families the case was much different. You could see that in modern Matriarchal Studies, a new, international field of knowledge, if you would not prefer to ignore it. In each of these societies – today extant as indigenous societies in Africa, America, and Asia – sisters together with their mothers and aunts raise children communally which makes them free for diverse other work. The female group with children is central here and is supported by men – which is just the opposite of the patriarchal oppession of mothers and children, be it in the patriarchal extended family or in the dysfunctional nuclear familiy.
So, please stop your ignorance and silence about this new knowledge, which is important for women of today to help them get rid of the disaster of the nuclear family!
Heide Goettner-Abendroth, founder of modern Matriarchal Studies
(see “Matriarchal Societies. Indigenous Cultures across the Globe”, New York 2013, Peter Lang)
International Academy HAGIA