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Thinking about family abolition (because of @smothurston.bsky.social's article) has me thinking about the perpetuation of *privatization of care* in family structures as it occurs in science fiction and fantasy and where these books propose alternatives

We may jump straight to the work of eugenicist Aldous Huxley, who's dystopian BraveNewWorld satirizes alternatives to family care that replace privatized care with controlling state universal-care-as-control keeping its constituents divided into castes, chemically disabled, and compliant.

Sue Burke's Semiosis series offers another vision of communal care at a much smaller scale. It suggests that agonism between humans and the animals and plants they rely on for survival, as well as agonism between generations must play a significant role in thinking longitudinally about care.

Becky Chambers' books both the Monk and Robot books and each of the Wayfarer's books think about care. Probably the Record of a Spaceborn few is the one which thinks most significantly about how communal care develops over time,... which I suppose any story that reflects on generation ships must.

It's interesting that Record of a Spaceborn Few is also the Wayfarers' book which depicts the most traditional natal family structure... while other books focus more on joining a found family, radical hospitality (after a history of exploitation), and recognition of/acceptance of one's personhood.

I'd have to re-read the Monk and Robot books to look at the utopian communal care offered there. Obviously theres a lot more at work than voluntary pebs.

The exhaustion and enclosure of the family is on full display in that book, and the characters struggle to imagine anything else. A sea adventure is an escape, a source of guilt, and a response to a care need (a missing sister).

Vo's book is alter-ian (neither better nor worse than our world, just fantastic) it showcases the monastery and mendicant ways as alternatives to the enclosure of the family sphere,... but also shows how mendicants often rely on family care rather than really subverting it.