Courtesy of Amber Kase
The second keynote event of Lewis & Clark’s 45th annual Gender Studies Symposium took place on March 12 and featured writer and theorist Sophie Lewis, who delivered a lecture examining the concept of “family abolition” and its implications for care, kinship and social organization. The talk brought together students, faculty and community members to consider how systems of care might change beyond the traditional nuclear household.
Lewis opened by connecting the theme of care to global political realities. Referencing ongoing wars and humanitarian crises, she said discussions about social organization cannot be separated from the broader question of how societies value and sustain human life. For Lewis, conversations about family structures ultimately intersect with questions of responsibility, violence and community well-being.
“I always think when I’m about to talk about care communization in the midst of the onslaught of U.S. war crimes, that something needs to be said about the apparent gulf between these topics,” Lewis said.
Lewis argued that debates about the family are inseparable from wider political and economic systems that shape who receives care and who is responsible for providing it. From there, Lewis turned to the concept of family abolition, acknowledging that the phrase often surprises or unsettles audiences encountering it for the first time. She noted that many people initially interpret the idea as an attack on relationships or emotional bonds. However, Lewis said the concept refers instead to a critique of how care work is structured within capitalist societies.
According to Lewis, the modern nuclear family functions as the primary institution through which caregiving labor — raising children, supporting elderly relatives and maintaining households — is privatized. These responsibilities are typically managed within households rather than distributed through collective systems. Family abolitionists, she said, seek to imagine how societies might recognize care so that it is not dependent on private households.
“To make it more graspable, for 21st century family abolitionists, the task is to make the private nuclear household materially unnecessary, and as such, socially obsolete,” she said.
The concept of family abolition remains contested within academic and political debates. Lewis acknowledged that the term can be polarizing, but emphasized that abolitionist frameworks are intended to expand — rather than eliminate — forms of care and connection.
Lewis explained that the concept of family abolition draws on the philosophical idea of “positive supersession,” associated with the work of Karl Marx. In this framework, abolition does not simply mean eliminating an institution. Instead, it involves transforming social structures so that their valuable aspects are preserved, while the conditions that create inequality or coercion are dismantled.
“This horizon of abolition combines elements of destruction, transformation and actualization. All of these three things at once,” Lewis said.
A large portion of Lewis’ lecture focused on the recent revival of family abolition debates in feminist and leftist scholarship. She traced the resurgence of interest to academic and activist discourse beginning in the mid 2010s that reconsidered the political role of the family within contemporary capitalism.
Lewis pointed to several scholars whose work has contributed to this renewed conversation, among them Black studies scholar Tiffany Lethabo King, whose writing examines how the institution of the nuclear family can limit alternative forms of community and social relations. Lewis explained that King’s work highlights how the family can shape and constrain the ways people imagine kinship and belonging.
Lewis also discussed the work of sociologist and organizer M. E. O’Brien, whose research connects family abolition to broader visions of social and sexual freedom. Lewis said O’Brien’s work argues that people’s romantic relationships, living arrangements and kinship networks should not determine their economic security or material well-being.
Lewis positioned her own writing within this broader discussion. She described how her research on pregnancy and gestational labor led to her book “Full Surrogacy Now,” which examines reproductive labor and the legal construction of parenthood under capitalism. Her later work expanded on those ideas to address the broader politics of care and the possibilities of what she calls “care communization.”
Lewis noted that the COVID-19 pandemic intensified debates about care and domestic labor. As schools closed and workplaces shifted, many families faced increased pressure to manage childcare, elder care and employment simultaneously. This crisis, she said, exposed the limits of a system that relies heavily on private households to provide essential services.
Throughout the lecture, Lewis argued that the family should be understood not only as an emotional or cultural institution but additionally as an economic one. She described the family as a system that assigns responsibilities for basic needs such as food, housing, education and healthcare to individuals and households.
“I propose defining the family simply as the form that the privatization can take in a class society,” she said.
Lewis suggested that rethinking care might involve developing and strengthening shared institutions and community systems that distribute responsibilities more broadly. Examples might include communal childcare, collective kitchens, cooperative housing or other forms of mutual support.
She emphasized that abolitionist thinking focuses on building new structures rather than simply dismantling existing ones.
“Abolition isn’t simply about trying to destroy the family,” Lewis said. “On the contrary, we’re saying that human beings’ hopes in connection with the family are hopes that are worth realizing in a real way.”
Lewis also connected family abolition to broader abolitionist traditions that challenge prisons and policing. In her view, these movements share a common goal of transforming social systems so that they better support human well-being.
Toward the end of her talk, Lewis traced the historical roots of family abolition in earlier socialist and feminist movements. She noted that many 19th and 20th century thinkers debated how domestic life might change under more egalitarian social systems. Figures such as philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and activist Angela Davis have raised critiques of the nuclear family and its relationship to gender inequality.
Lewis argued that these debates faded from mainstream political discussion among the left in the 20th century, when many progressive movements began defending the family as a protective institution — a shift reflected in contemporary policy debates that often frame the family as a unit requiring protection and preservation. However, she suggested that contemporary economic pressures and care crises have revived interest in revisiting earlier critiques.
Lewis concluded by encouraging the audience to view the family as one historically specific arrangement among many possible ways of organizing care. Expanding systems of collective support, she suggested, could make it possible for people to receive care and safety in connection beyond the limits of the private household. Her remarks framed family abolition not as an immediate policy program, but as a framework for reconsidering how care is distributed across society. The discussion reflects broader debates about the limits of privatized care systems, particularly as economic inequality and social welfare gaps continue to shape access to basic needs.
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