The Policing of Families

Rating:
Summary: State-driven force homogenization of family structures
Review: Donzelot's historical review of the French government's attempt to engineer society via force homogenization of family structures is not only a message of the historical conditions of the early 1900s. It is also an intimidating description of what can happen when social engineering goes bad. The book describes the mechanization not only of the centralized institutions such as the judicial system, but also of local agencies, such individual philanthropists and community help organizations.

Donelot traces the transition of control from the Church where priests constructed the images of the "ideal" family to educational, judicial, medical and psychiatric constructed images of the ideal family. In all cases, Donzelot is able to illustrate how the structural construction of familial roles fails to inculcate meaning into familial life. Moreover, he is able to illustrate how these maneuvers actually inhibit meaning or destroy already existing emotionally supportive structures. His writing is a critically important look back in time that allows a clearer vision of the future of the interrelations of social structures and individual lives.