The Neoliberal Family: Feminism, Race and the Right in the 1980s

• In Event: Politics of Intimacy: Race, Family and the Neoliberal State

Abstract

This paper examines the political and public struggles to define family during the late 1970s-early 1980s. In particular, I examine President Carter’s White House Conferences on American Families, which took place between 1979-80. Analyzing the White House Conferences is as way to understand how by the 1990s and 2000s “the family” had been mobilized by economic conservatives to authorize neoliberal imperatives, leaving many families in poverty. I explore why and how the “neoliberal family” - white, college educated, liberal, not necessarily heterosexual, but upper middle-class families – that developed during the 1970s, enabled provide a snapshot of how “family issues” such as abortion, gay marriage, and worker’s rights played or did not play into the evolving role of the state and the economy.

Author

• Priscilla Yamin, University of Oregon