Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:43:04.538Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Rousseau's Political Defense of the Sex‐roled Family

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Abstract

We argue that Rousseau's defense of the sex‐roled family is not based on biological determinism or simple misogyny. Rather, his advocacy of sexual differentiation is based on his understanding of its ability to bring individuals outside of themselves into interdependent communities, and thus to counter natural independence, self'absorption and asociality, as well as social competitiveness and egoism. This political defense of the sex‐roled family needs more critique by feminists.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bloom, Allan. 1985. Rousseau on the equality of the sexes. Justice and equality here and now. Lucash, Frank, ed. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Charlton, D.G. 1984. New images of the natural m france: A study in european cultural history 1750‐1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Christenson, Ron. 1972. The political theory of male chauvinism: J.J. Rousseau's paradigm. Midwest Quarterly 13: 291299.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, Zillah. 1981. The radical future of radical feminism. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Fairchilds, Cissie. 1984a. Domestic enemies: Servants and their masters in old regime france. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Fairchilds, Cissie. 1984b. Women and family. French women and the age of enlightenment. Spencer, Samia, ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Fox‐Genovese, Elizabeth. 1984. Women and work. French women and the age of enlightenment. Spencer, Samia, ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Jirmack, P.D. 1979. The paradox of Sophie and Julie: Contemporary response to Rousseau's ideal wife and ideal mother. Women and society in eighteenth‐century france. Jacobs, Eva, et. al, ed. London: The Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Josephson, Matthew. 1931. Jean‐Jacques Rousseau. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.Google Scholar
Lange, Lynda. 1981. Rousseau and modern feminism. Social Theory and Practice 7: 245277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Lynda. 1979. Rousseau: Women and the general will. The sexism of social and political theory. Clark, Lorenne and Lange, Lynda, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1968. vThe educational writings of John Locke. Axtell, James L., ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Jane Roland. 1981. Sophie and Emile: A case study of sex bias in the history of educational thought. Harvard Educational Review 51:357372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1979. Women in western political thought Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques. 1979. Emile, or on education. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques. 1978. On the social contract. Masters, Roger, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques. 1960. Politics and the arts. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Joel. 1984. The sexual politics of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sussman, George. 1982. Selling mother's milk: The wet‐nursing business in france: 1715‐1914. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Weiss, Penny. 1987. Rousseau, anti‐feminism, and woman's nature. Political Theory 15: 8198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, Penny. 1990. Sex, freedom and equality in Rousseau's Emile. Polity (forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wexler, Victor. 1976. Made for man's delight: Rousseau as anti‐feminist. American Historical Review 81: 266291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar