Comments on: New ideas for running “team family” like a business! (Not.)

By: cgeye

cgeye — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:06:46 +0000

Why do we want families to be treated like businesses, when all the safety nets that help ‘bail out’ families in trouble are being burned away by the business community — that now wants all families to emulate them?

Isn’t this patriarchal avoidance of all that messy women-and-children stuff, to train his genetic and matrimonial servants to address him in the tones he’s used to at work?

And when do certain employees get flex-time? Does this approach increase the time non-stay-at-home partners spend in the home, engaged with families, at all?

And what about disabled family members? Do they get laid off?

By: cgeye

cgeye — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:58:19 +0000

Why not *pay a living wage for housekeeping and childcare*, at least? Look how quiet the room got….

And, of course, when unfair working conditions exist (abuse, unrealistic standards, neglect of children’s health), is the right to strike preserved, or is binding arbitration, with the manager as judge, mandatory?

and you know this is the flip of “at Amalgamated Widgets, we treat our employees like a family…” sheesh.

By: Comradde PhysioProffe

Comradde PhysioProffe — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:40:29 +0000

This is one species of the genus of horribly toxic neoliberal propaganda that is fuckeing uppe pretty much everything it touches: that all processes, entities, organizations, and institutions should be “run like businesses”. People repeat this gibberish like it is some self-evident axiom of geometry or something.

By: grumpy archaeologist

grumpy archaeologist — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 18:39:39 +0000

I think I read a book about this once, it was called Cheaper by the Dozen, and it was a lot funnier than that article.

Feminist Avatar’s comment is very insightful. I also don’t understand where the fixation on businesses as the greatest examples of social organization comes from, though – don’t people understand that talking about efficiency isn’t the same as achieving it, or even that efficiency and profit should not be the highest values in all spheres of life? In addition to not recognizing the structure and labor that does exist in most families, there has to be some willful self-delusion going on here in idealizing businesses. Surprise.

By: loumac

loumac — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 18:16:55 +0000

Feminist Avatar, thank you for this: “a mid-twentieth century ideology that taught (primarily) women to disguise home labour, so that husband and children came home to a ‘haven’, rather than a place of work.” You just summed up in a half-sentence exactly what I would have taken a rambling paragraph to try to locate. That is exactly the source of most of my discomfort with the piece. Plus the grotesque family-brand-as-extension-of-the-penis-I-mean-patronym thing. Plus the heteronormativity. Plus the privileging of faith as part of a family brand. I evilly found myself hoping that at least one of the children in the photograph, now branded despite themselves as Christians just like Daddy, will turn out to be a fabulous, self-confident, atheist transgender activist.

By: Susan

Susan — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 14:33:03 +0000

This just makes my head hurt…

By: Z

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 09:02:22 +0000

This is hilarious. Although I would in fact like to have a business meeting with my family and I am angling to get one.

By: quixote

quixote — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 06:56:07 +0000

Branding? Family branding? You have got to be kidding me.

Creepy is not a word with enough tentacles to describe it.

By: Janice

Janice — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 03:52:37 +0000

I’d love to have a nightly meeting (aka family dinner) but due to work schedules, we get two such events in a week. Still, we manage to make it all work. In this case, our calendar is the secret to success.

That said, FA is right that someone who treats these type of activities such as talking as a family or conferring on plans as novelties is someone who’s never noticed the work of family life.

By: Feminist Avatar

Feminist Avatar — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:28:05 +0000

I wonder whether the families that adopted these ‘business models’ (er, checklists haven’t be used in families before? Chores? Family meetings? Dude, what families have they been part of?) have thought that families aren’t meant to have structure- that things just magically happen? And, they’ve suddenly realised that perhaps communicating, setting boundaries, making plans, is actually necessary for families (or any group of people) to function effectively?

And, if this is the case, I wonder whether these adults have perhaps been raised by parents who made those structures seem invisible to them as children, perhaps a casualty of a mid-twentieth century ideology that taught (primarily) women to disguise home labour, so that husband and children came home to a ‘haven’, rather than a place of work? Or did they come from really unstructured families, but if so, they’re all clearly middle class, so something must have worked in their homes for them to succeed – which you might think would have made them more reflective about what it took to succeed and less surprised that they need to implement structure?