pro-patriarchy arises when there's a dispute between the mother and the father. If we say that they're equal partners, then the state has an excuse to step in and play tiebreaker to decide who gets their way, in the event they can't reach consensus on their own. A unit with a hierarchy and chain of command is able to be much more cohesive. "Family" is also a vague term. A single mom and her kid are counted as a family these days. "Patriarchy" emphasizes the rule of the father. This has implications for, say, situations where an older man knocks up a 15-year-old girl. State laws are changing so that in such a situation, he would not be allowed to marry her. But technically, as long as she has that kid rather than getting an abortion, a family has been created. So the politicians who banned "child marriage" can still claim to be "pro-family." "Pro-family" also means that the politicians can bash anything that doesn't produce kids. They can say that abortion, homosexuality, etc. are all wrong because they don't create families. (Although now, with same sex marriage, we have a workaround to that problem, for those who don't mind making use of an institution that was designed for the needs of heterosexual couples.) To avoid these kinds of implications, one would have to combine "pro-family" with something else, e.g. "pro-family libertarian" to emphasize the primacy of the individual. The central idea of patriarchy, the rule of the father, emphasizes that the state is not calling the shots. Social workers' peeking into refrigerators might be called "pro-family" because it's supposedly in the family's best interests, but it would be explicitly NOT in accordance with patriarchy, if the father did not want the social worker there. Patriarchy, then, is a much stronger and precise value system than being "pro-family". |