Rousseau's Political Defense of the Sex-roled Family

The task of returning to the major historical figures of philosophy in order to document the sexual inegalitarianism in their thought seems of limited usefulness for projects on the agenda of feminist theory and practice. It would appear that there are endless tasks for feminist scholars more pressing, constructive, and relevant to the attainment of sexual equality than reconstructing the arguments of someone such as Rousseau—an eighteenth-century, white, male, European writing in defense of enforced sexual differentiation.

It is necessary, however, for the cogency of feminist theory and the success of feminist politics to hear and answer the concerns and questions of the opposition, concerns and questions too often ignored or oversimplified. Rousseau, for example, was not simply a misogynist determined to interpret nature, history, or culture in such a way as to bless male supremacy with the stamp of inevitability or justifiability. In fact, the concerns that led him to support sexual differentiation, especially the concern with moving beyond self-interest to real community, are often laudable and shared by many feminists. We will argue that Rousseau's resistance to feminism, as expressed in his endorsement of the sex-roled family, is not based on the same morally offensive principles and logically flawed reasoning as are many other anti-feminisms. But because Rousseau's anti-feminism is as troubling in its implications as are the others, it is one that deserves to be heard and responded to.

Recent feminist critiques of Rousseau's sexual politics have generally been severe (Okin 1979, Lange 1979, Eisenstein 1981). Perhaps more was reasonably expected of someone with such high praise for liberty and equality, one actually familiar with feminist ideas, an individual with painful personal experience of second-class treatment, and a thinker utterly convinced of how fatal oppressive power is to the existence of true community. When, in spite of these experiences and principles, Rousseau sends women to the home and men to the assembly, there is some cause for thinking he was in a position to know better and want more.

There is, however, much disagreement in the secondary literature regarding both what Rousseau prescribes for the sexes, and why. We are left with often incompatible descriptions and explanations of his sexual politics that sometimes mirror more general disagreements about his politics and philosophy. It has been claimed, for example, that Rousseau limits women's activity because he is fearful of women's power (Wexler 1976), that he thinks women's inferior nature requires a circumscribed role (Christenson 1972, Okin 1979), that he endorses women's subservience as a necessary condition of men's freedom (Eisenstein 1981), and that he empowers the sexes differently from real concern with establishing sexual equality (Schwartz 1984, Bloom 1985). Consequently, Rousseau's treatment of the sexes has been held to be both a major breech of his principles and an integral part of his politics.

We hope to offer an interpretation of Rousseau's sex-roled family that can incorporate and surpass some of these incompatible interpretations of his work, and that can demonstrate what he might have been trying to accomplish in endorsing sexual differentiation. We argue that at least on the theoretical level he is internally consistent. Rousseau's advocacy of sexual roles is based on his understanding of their ability to bring individuals outside of themselves into interdependent communities, and thus to combat egoism, selfishness, indolence and narcissism—goals that consistently inform much of his politics. In order to demonstrate this, we show that Rousseau's rejections of both aristocratic and bourgeois families are founded upon their inability to accomplish politically what the sex-roled, affectionate family can accomplish.

Defenses of the “traditional” family are often thought to arise either from ignorance of its oppressiveness, disdain for women, or belief that its differentiated roles fulfill the distinct natures of women and men. While each of these explanations does capture a part of the reality, the picture they paint of defenses of the sex-roled family is seriously incomplete.

Rousseau's rationale for sexual differentiation in general, and within the family in particular, is not to be found in an appeal to the different natures of the sexes. By his own account no natural differences in strength, intellect, reproductive capacities or interests mandate a strict sexual division of roles and traits in society (Weiss 1987). But if Rousseau does not resort to claims about the different natures of the sexes, and if his scheme reflects more than the misogyny or blindness of its author, as we believe it does, then how is it possible to explain his system of sexual differentiation?

While frequently making rhetorical reference to the different natures of men and women in defending his proposals, Rousseau ultimately appeals to claims quite unrelated to sexual natures. For instance, in discussing female chastity he speaks of how the “Supreme Being … while abandoning woman to unlimited desires … joins modesty to these desires in order to constrain them” (Rousseau 1979, 359). However, despite the apparent reliance here on the (divine) given of woman's nature, his more consistent and convincing position emerges when he writes that “Even if it could be denied that a special sentiment of chasteness was natural to women… it is in society's interest that women acquire these qualities” (Rousseau 1960,87). By referring to what traits women should acquire“in society's interest,” Rousseau introduces a completely independent, and more internally consistent justification for his rigidly sexual' ly differentiated society. Instead of focusing on the supposed causes of sexual differentiation, as found in nature, we must turn instead to an examination of the effects of sexual differentiation on various social relations. Then we can discover why it is that Rousseau considers sexual differentiation to be “in society's interest.”

Rousseau's strategy of evaluating and justifying sexual differentiation by its consequences, especially after comparing them to the effects of the alternatives, is not so surprising. It is not the question, “Is X good in itself?” that preoccupies the citizen of Geneva but, instead, “Is X beneficial and useful?” For example, the Letter to d'Alembert inquires into the effects on different peoples of establishing a theater. He writes in that letter that “To ask if the theater is good or bad in itself is to pose too vague a question…. The theater is made for the people, and it is only by its effects on the people that one can determine its absolute qualities” (Rousseau 1960, 17). Similarly, Rousseau's famous opposition to the Enlightenment stems not from a belief that the arts and sciences are unequivocally bad in themselves, but from reflection on the consequences of imperfect learning by the masses. Thus, the suggestion that Rousseau's sexual scheme is devised for its social consequences is not as idiosyncratic as it might at first appear.

Figuring out why Rousseau sees sexual differentiation as socially beneficial requires considering Rousseau's preferred family in two related contexts. The first context is his general thought, where sexual differentiation can be understood as a response to certain aspects of what he perceives as “the human condition.” For example, according to Rousseau, the bonds created in the sex-roled family, and the interdependence fostered by sex roles in general, motivate and teach us how to be part of a political community, which he holds to be necessary for survival and morality. The second context is the historical forms of the family with which Rousseau was familiar. Rousseau witnessed the decline of the traditional, aristocratic family, and the emergence of the bourgeois family (both of which may be considered patriarchal), and found both politically unacceptable. A look at the families Rousseau rejects gives a sense of both what goods he is trying to attain by creating sexual differences, and what evils he is trying to skirt.

Rousseau's views on the sexes are thus strongly political, in at least two senses. First, Rousseau is certain that the private and public affect each other in numerous and central ways—that women, children, sexuality, families, etc. matter to politics as much as do the actions of men in the assembly. Because the private has political consequences, Rousseau to a great extent constructs the private with an eye to its political repercussions. The private becomes the parent and servant of the public: sex roles serve political ends and teach us lessons that give birth to certain desirable social possibilities. Rousseau's views on the sexes are also political in a second sense, in that they reflect assumptions and choices about what kinds of communities are possible, necessary, and desirable, and involve practical strategies for attaining them.

Rousseau might be considered anti-feminist at the outset because he evaluates the role of women in a light other than simply what women want to or can do. However, it is at least true that Rousseau does the same for men (Martin 1981, Weiss 1990), and that what women want to or can do is not irrelevant. Indeed, some opposition to feminism, including Rousseau's, may arise from viewing feminists as evaluating the role of women abstracted from political considerations. Rousseau's argument is that certain necessary social benefits result from the establishment of sexual differentiation, far-reaching benefits that serve as a large part of its justification. Such a defense of the traditional family presents a different set of questions to feminists than do more familiar ones based on appeals to biological determinism, and needs more thorough understanding and critique by feminists.

The first two sections of this paper develop the two contexts in which the ends of Rousseau's sexual politics can be discerned. The succeeding two sections explore the negative personal and social consequences of the aristocratic and bourgeois families he rejects. These “case studies” offer a picture of what Rousseau thinks a family ought to provide for its members and to society and why he finds the sex-roled, affectionate family to be the most personally and politically beneficial. The conclusion will point out some of the questions Rousseau's defense of the sex-roled family raises for feminist theory and some of the questions feminist theory raises for Rousseau.

Rousseauandthe Human Condition

Rousseau portrays people in the state of nature as free, happy, independent, amoral, innocent, and isolated. They are without need for the services or esteem of others and can generally satisfy their minimal desires independently. While self-absorbed, they do not desire to harm others. These asocial individuals possess numerous faculties in potentiality, but neither internal nor external forces naturally operate to motivate them to do any more than is necessary to survive. Rousseau's primitives are lazy, content, independent and generally harmless.

All relations in the state of nature are temporary and amoral, and provide no precedent or model for the sorts of relations needed between social beings. There may be some infrequent instances of cooperation in the search for food, but such liaisons are temporary and based entirely on self-interest. Sexual encounters are random and fleeting, motivated by the coincidence of desire and opportunity, and cause no lasting attachment between the partners.

Even the mother-child relation in the state of nature provides a poor model for the interdependent, moral, sustained relations modern social people need. As Rousseau portrays it, mother-child relations in the state of nature do not differ significantly from those of other animals. He sees the demands of children in the state of nature as simple, of short duration, and compatible with the satisfaction of the mother's meager needs and desires. A father's assistance is unnecessary, even were he able to grasp his relation to a child, which Rousseau thinks he is not. A mother cares for a child to relieve her own swollen breasts of milk, out of compassion for a crying creature, and finally out of affection born of habit. But Rousseau imagines that in the state of nature children venture off on their own permanently at a very young age—as soon as they have learned to feed and defend themselves—and that this rather uneventfully marks the end of all relations between mother and child.¹

However, accidental events and developments alter the easy balance between desires and powers in the state of nature, until interdependence finally becomes necessary for survival. The question now becomes how to teach and motivate asocial, lazy, independent individuals to work with and for each other as well as for themselves. Rousseau considers this change radical and difficult. The fact that people need each other does not automatically mean that they will cooperate for mutual advantage rather than attempt to exploit each other for personal gain. Self-love, once complicated by social relations, easily leads to selfishness and concern with advantage over others, bringing about the long train of personal and social evils so magnificently described in the first Discourse.

Rousseau does not take egoism, competitiveness or conflict to be endemic to the human condition. Nor does he assume, however, that by nature people are as concerned with others, including children, as with ourselves. Rousseau's quest is to establish a social framework that can provide us with the skills and desire both to end the isolation, self-absorption, and independence of natural people, and combat the egoism, competitiveness, and conflict among “civilized” people who have become interdependent.

The contrast between childhood in the state of nature and modern social childhood helps clarify Rousseau's “political problem.” As society “advances,” the period of childhood is extended, and being a parent becomes more demanding. In civil society children are dependent for much longer than in the state of nature, for they must learn to speak, to read, to earn a living, to behave properly—the list is virtually endless, and the specific skills needed can change rapidly.² Further, parents are now subject to judgments by others regarding the quality of the care they bestow upon their children, making their task even more burdensome.

It is the case that the range of solutions considered by Rousseau is narrow. Or, perhaps more accurately, his very framing of the problems itself colors the solutions. Looking at Rousseau's thoughts on sexual differentiation and the family in the context of his general thought, the problems he addresses might include the following: “How can we help ensure that women, once sufficiently motivated by pity, full breasts, and modest requests to pay some minimal attention to a child for a relatively short period of time, will now invest so much more for so much longer? And what will turn a naturally lazy and asocial male, whose participation in child rearing was once largely unnecessary, into a father? What will turn both into citizens?”

What such questions indicate is that the possible range of child-rearing arrangements considered all generally appeal to some form of the nuclear, heterosexual family. The attempt to motivate parental, especially maternal, “sacrifice” presupposes both a particular model of public-private relations and a distinct conception of community that can fairly be said to beg as many questions as they answer. Nonetheless, such are the questions Rousseau considers and, as we will argue below, his position on sexual relations provides a large part of his answer to them. Rousseau's rejection of certain families arises from their inability to respond to fundamental crises of the human social condition, and their tendency to support corrupt political and social relations. His defense of the sex-roled, affectionate family is likewise based on its beneficial social consequences.

The Changing Family

In the traditional noble family of sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth century France, the male exerted powerful rule over both his children and wife. Arranged marriages were standard, with economic and family advantage the criteria in mate selection. “Within these marriages, relations between husband and wife and between parents and children were cold, distant, and unloving…. Noble wives were poorly treated by their husbands,” and remote from their children (Fairchilds 1984b, 97, 98).

Needless to say, this family was not a reliable source of emotional satisfaction for any of its members, and illicit relationships regularly filled the vacuum. Even here, it has been said that “The ceremony of taking a lover was momentous; position, family, social attainments, were all weighed” (Josephson 1931, 126). Children were cared for by wet nurses, nursemaids, and tutors, successively. This aristocratic family was thus seldom more than a reproductive and economic entity, with birthing legitimate heirs a primary function. Rousseau, we shall see, rejects this family on a number of grounds. It is to this family that his remarks about “unfaithful” wives, “brilliant” wives, and women turning to “entertainments of the city” (Rousseau 1979, 44, 409) are directed, as are comments about tyrannical and neglectful fathers (Rousseau 1979, 38n).

In addition to analyzing the defects of the family of the Ancien Regime, Rousseau focuses his attention on its likely successor: the bourgeois family. Actually, in Rousseau's view the self-absorbed bourgeois individual is incapable of really being a member of a family. This is because

These self-interested bourgeois “role-players” are not part of a greater whole, be it the family or community, in any sense but the limited and inadequate one based on self-interest. “I observe,” writes Rousseau, “that in the modem age men no longer have a hold on one another except by force or by self-interest” (Rousseau 1979, 321). People are self-centered and view others as means to their ends. The bourgeois family, accordingly, is without a common interest or firm bond. Members of the family pursue their own interests, considering the others and fulfilling their obligations when it is useful or convenient, or when they are forced to do so. Such relations are superficial and unreliable, and do nothing to teach us the important lessons Rousseau thinks we need to learn about interdependence, loyalty, and community. It is to this emerging family that Rousseau's remarks about families of strangers are directed, as are many of his comments about women seeking entry into previously male arenas—comments, that is, about liberal feminism.

The general framework of Rousseau's thought and his particular understanding of the propensities inherent in aristocratic and bourgeois families provide a basis for interpreting his views on sexual differentiation. Examining specific features of the families he condemns offers a picture of what Rousseau held to be their negative effects on parent-child and male-female relations and, consequently, on general social and political arrangements. These families are cast aside on political grounds—because of their inability to mitigate, or their propensity to encourage, undesirable human relations—and the sex-roled affectionate family is offered as a better alternative.

Parent-Child Relations

As discussed above, parent-child relations in the state of nature are of limited usefulness in helping establish the kinds of human bonds Rousseau asserts we now need. He also considers the families of his own time inadequate. The status quo to which Rousseau was responding was parental neglect of children, and the lowly status of the child as uninteresting, useless, or sinful (Charlton 1984). Until almost the very end of the Ancien Regime, child care in most noble and bourgeois households was handled primarily by servants. Even in the 1760's, '70's, and '80's, when a few notable women began to breast-feed and supervise their own children, household servants played a major role in childrearing (Fairchilds 1984a).

The role of servants in the lives of children began at birth when the infant was immediately sent to a wet-nurse (nourrice). This custom was deeply rooted by Rousseau's time, having begun as early as the thirteenth century, when Paris had a bureau of recommanderesses that arranged hired nurses. In the eighteenth century the hiring of wet-nurses was prevalent among the bourgeoisie and the artisanate as well as the aristocracy. In artisanal families the motives for wet-nursing were primarily economic: the mother's labor was essential to the family economy, and she could not afford the interruption that nursing would entail (Fox-Genovese 1984). There were social reasons for wet-nursing as well: nursing was considered a degrading and vulgar activity which supposedly ruined one's figure and strained one's health. Another reason was sexual: there were folk taboos against resuming sexual intercourse during lactation. Thus wet-nursing was an economic necessity for some women and their families and a response to social pressures and taboos for others. Rousseau's opposition to wet-nursing in particular, and to parental neglect of children in general, is unwavering, and he is given much credit for persuading mothers to breast-feed their babies and for contributing to “what was almost a cult of the mother figure” (Jirmack 1979, 161).

Sounding like some twentieth century anti-feminists, Rousseau states that in certain childcare arrangements, greater risk of poor care exists because the caretakers generally have no long-term stake in the child's upbringing. Their primary concern is simply minimizing the amount of trouble a child causes them while under their charge, and no more. (It is interesting to note how often today infants are called “good” who are, more precisely, easy to care for, i.e., who sleep a lot and cry but a little.) Rousseau refers to wet nurses as “mercenaries” (Rousseau 1979, 44), evoking the imagery of professional soldiers who serve any country merely for wages. Rousseau's inference is that the nurse really takes no interest in the child him or herself, but is basically concerned with earning an income and saving herself trouble. This assumption explains the practice of swaddling infants, which Rousseau abhors, and which he uses as representative of the poor treatment of children under such arrangements. However, while there is no reason to doubt Rousseau's sincere concern with the physical health and welfare of children, and while the stories of neglect and abuse of children by nurses in his time were numerous (Fairchilds 1984b, 100; Sussman 1982,73-97), such concern accounts for but the smallest part of his reconstruction of the family.

That Rousseau's concern is not primarily the quality of care given children outside the nuclear family is supported by his awareness of the need to strengthen family ties beyond what may “naturally” exist; he never takes their strength, safety, or reliability for granted. Rousseau does not believe that nature goes too far in ensuring that children will be cared for because, as discussed earlier, outside of pity, which motivates one to help a suffering child, and full breasts, which encourage women to nurse for their own comfort, nature is essentially silent. The point is that even if Rousseau could be shown that children are as well-tended by nurses or childcare workers as by parents, he would hesitate to endorse the former. By spelling out some of the numerous negative consequences of such arrangements, it is possible to understand that the basis of Rousseau's objection to them is essentially political.

Rousseau first notes the simple fact that with a child under the charge of one other than her or his parents, the family spends less time together. He finds the consequences of this worrisome, for habit is not then allowed the opportunity to strengthen the ties of blood (Rousseau 1979, 46). Given his assumption that such blood ties are fragile and require reinforcement, extra-familial childcare will not enhance the potential care and love between family members that Rousseau would want to develop. Spending so much time apart, and in different pursuits, family members do not even know each other well. Rousseau's concern is that in the end they will be like residents of a corrupt city, polite strangers (Rousseau 1979, 49) who really think first of themselves.

The habit of caring for another is vital to the strengthening of blood ties, which alone are easily broken. Rousseau's definition of nature is important here: he would like the word to be “limited to habits conformable to nature” (Rousseau 1979, 39). Such habits would never be lost once learned, because they would conform to our dispositions as strengthened by our senses, but not yet corrupted by our opinions. Thus habit can strengthen nature, even though it can also stifle it. In this case, the habit of caring for one's own infant can strengthen the rather meager biological bond just as the habit of not caring can destroy it. In the family that does not spend ample time together, members may not be dravm to one another from affection born of habit, an arrangement that threatens to maintain original human separateness and fails to combat egoism.

From the child's point of view, as well, extra-familial childcare has drawbacks. A child spending long hours away from the family can easily come to love the care-giver rather than the parents (Rousseau 1979, 49) or become prone to making “secret comparisons which always tend to diminish his esteem for those who govern him and consequently have authority over him” (Rousseau 1979, 57). The “losing” party in such comparisons—whether parents, wet-nurses, or tutors—may consequently find it difficult to elicit affection and obedience from the child, making their already unnatural duties more distasteful and possibly leading to lack of concern for child-rearing responsibilities. Or they may attempt to win back the child's affection by educational practices which are of dubious merit. Even if parents are preferred, their children may resent them for having entrusted them to those whose care is inferior, rather than providing it themselves.

Rousseau also fears that a child cared for by “mercenaries” may “bring back the habit of having no attachments” (Rousseau 1979, 49). It is especially this politically dangerous possibility that arouses his concern. While not uninterested in nutrition and the high rate of infant mortality, the alienation of affection between mother and child was what most bothered Rousseau about a practice like wet-nursing. Once wet-nursing was finished, at about two years of age, the child was usually brought back into its family of origin and taught to regard its former nurse as a servant. Sometimes children were no longer allowed to see their nurses. Weaning is often traumatic for a child, no matter how well or poorly cared for, and some infants shed tears upon being separated from their nurses. Rousseau thinks this attempt to make children forget or disdain their first caretakers instills in them a general contempt and ingratitude (Rousseau 1979, 45). He fears the child will in the end despise both the biological parents, who do not offer much care during infancy, and the substitute parents, whose class or status now makes them an unacceptable object of affection. In addition, the failure of the mother to nurse her child robs her of an opportunity to learn to care for someone other than the self.

Thus, Rousseau's argument for breast-feeding is not a materialist one. His main concern is not infant health and the quality of milk—its vitamins, antibodies, or other nutritional aspects emphasized by some twentieth-century advocates—but the quality of human relationships formed from the beginning of life. If one allows a young child to be completely cared for by a servant for whom one then teaches the child contempt, one creates a monstrous person who does not know how to treat anyone else properly.⁴

Rousseau's arguments are not directed only to “neglectful mothers.” His injunction to fathers to take responsibility for their children is less well-known than his pleas to mothers, but it is no less important and is based on similar considerations.

Rousseau first tries to counter the notions that fathers are either inept parents or rightly consumed with more “important” tasks than caring for their children.

It is possible and important that men be fathers, for Rousseau regards “surrogate fathers,” or tutors, in the same light as wet-nurses—as mercenaries who corrupt the family just as mercenary soldiers do the state. Rich men who claim that they do not have time to care for their children purchase the time of others to perform their parental duties.⁵ As Rousseau well knew, preceptors were often picked from among the male domestics in the household and were treated as family servants. He chastises fathers for subjecting their children to a master-servant relationship that ultimately produces a servile mentality.

Hiring tutors may leave children and fathers unattached, and thereby also fail to develop a common interest between parents. Use of “mercenaries” teaches children that money buys servants and that people only “care” out of self-interest; further, it fails to allow any true attachment even between child and tutor to develop, for theirs is in fact a relationship based on money.

The family in the Ancien Regime was an institution primarily organized for the transmission of property and rank from one generation to the next. Rousseau's new definition of fatherhood is rooted in the anti-patriarchalism of Locke's political theory. He expands Locke's view of the father as friend of his children to include the notion of father as educator or governor of his sons (Locke 1968). Like Locke, Rousseau emphasizes that the legacy or “portion” that a father bestows on his children should be a personal involvement in their education. While Locke still places high value on the transmission of property along with the “good breeding” of a gentleman, Rousseau is occupied with the transmission of a set of values that will enable children to be independent of wealth and rank.

Rousseau wants fathers to give their children something of themselves, rather than only their money. He wants them to provide an example of citizenship that rests on love and benevolence for others rather than on wealth. At the outset of Emile, he complains about “Fathers' ambition, avarice, tyranny, and false foresight, their negligence, their harsh insensitivity” (Rousseau 1979, 38n). Fathers are rather like the laws, which Rousseau finds “always so occupied with property and so little with persons, because their object is peace, not virtue” (Rousseau 1979, 37n).

Another negative political consequence Rousseau cites of having two sets of care-givers is the risk of presenting conflicting guidelines to children. Rousseau writes,

Certainly, if Rousseau expresses doubts about two people sharing care of a child, he will be extremely hesitant to involve more parties, who might introduce additional principles into education. But why is this so problematic?

Rousseau's concern about the conflicting guidelines of multiple care-givers seems to involve the way children will come to regard the guidelines themselves as well as their source. If different authorities espouse conflicting rules, children may conclude that the guidelines are merely reflections of individual wills, and/or may see authority as merely an obstacle, a set of arbitrary rules that one may be able to evade with sufficient study of them. Such perspectives, according to a Rousseauean framework, encourage rebellion and disrespect for rules, and maintain a picture of human relations that is essentially based on subjectivity and self-interest. Thus, multiple care-givers potentially undermine the rule of law, considered by Rousseau to be the basis of all legitimate states, and complicate the already difficult project of moving self-absorbed individuals into a greater whole.

According to Rousseau, then, aristocratic and bourgeois families pose grave problems both for the bonds between parents and children and for general social relations. First, these families fail to reinforce natural ties with habitual ones, leaving people separate and self-absorbed. Second, these arrangements present children with torn loyalties, leading to any of three negative consequences: childcare, already “unnatural” and a sacrifice, is made more onerous by the weak bonds; education, essential for making us responsible social creatures, may be compromised for the sake of children's affection; or, most important, children cared for by “mercenaries” may learn that people only tend to others when it is in their interest or convenient for them to do so. The ultimate danger is that respect for persons and for law is not learned. Rousseau's firm belief in the insufficiency of self-interest as a basis for community, and in the necessity and difficulty of combatting natural human isolation and egoism, leads him to reject aristocratic and bourgeois families as personally and politically useless or dangerous. Similar problems are presented by the relationships between spouses in these families.

Male-Female Marital Relations

Rousseau advocates not only that women and men be good parents, but good spouses, as well. We next explore Rousseau's sense of the negative repercussions of an aristocratic or bourgeois family structure on relations between spouses, and the consequences of these “inadequate” male-female relations on general social arrangements.

Rousseau's words on sex education are often remarkable for the sense of danger they portray. “How many precautions must be taken!” (Rousseau 1979, 335), he exclaims. The relations one will have with other people in general will, Rousseau believes, be affected by how one deals with the need for a partner. Human sexuality has political implications.

In the contemporary discussions of marriage there was a debate about ill-matched marriages (mesalliances), which meant marriages between members of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Rousseau changes the meaning of the term: for him an ill-matched marriage is one where the characters of the partners, rather than their ranks, are not compatible. Rousseau draws a further inference:

The message here is striking: Rousseau is saying that the greater the social and political inequality, the less husbands and wives are bound to each other. Apparently this is because people marry for reasons of social rank and not for compatibility of character, thus making it less likely that they will love each other and be sexually faithful. The “family” is destroyed, or is never truly established in the first place, by the inequality of the social structure. The quality of married life affects the morality of the citizens. Rousseau witnesses individuals who by and large seem incapable of establishing meaningful relationships as family members or as fellow citizens.

In contrast to eighteenth-century French law and practice, Rousseau emphasizes that a woman should have a voice in determining whom she will marry, and that marriage is a social institution requiring mutual respect and fidelity from both partners. He opposes the authoritarian relations of parent and child whereby parents choose the husband for the daughter based on wealth and rank. Aristocratic families with arranged marriages based on economics did not establish an arena of love and affection between the spouses. Rousseau seems to see this as encouraging adultery. In fact, it can be said that adultery was institutionalized at the highest level of French society, for the married Louis XV had a publicly-acknowledged relationship with Madame de Pompadour, herself a married bourgeoise who played a powerful role in France as advisor to the King and as patron of the arts.

Rousseau has the greatest wrath for the adulterer, who inevitably “destroys the family” (Rousseau 1979, 324). His argument here is quite different from many offered today, for Rousseau does not consider that only one model of male-female relations is somehow ordained and that any straying from it is sinful. One need only consider relations in his state of nature, where sexual encounters occurred when and with whom the desire arose, and established no moral bond.

Infidelity is condemned because of its undesirable personal and political effects, which may be several. First, there is the possibility of a woman bearing children which biologically are not her husband's. A man unsure of his biological relation to his wife's children may see less of himself in them, identify with them less strongly, and be less motivated to work and sacrifice for them; this injures both his relation with his children and his partnership with his wife. Given Rousseau's assumption that such motivation to sacrifice for others is already in short supply, the loss could be a significant one for the family unit. Second, an unfaithful partner, male or female, causes one to distrust others outside the family, who become potential competitors. This creates strained social relations in general, precisely what Rousseau wants to avoid. Third, with suspicions of infidelity in the air, spouses do not trust one another, and only feign love. “Under such circumstances the family is little more than a group of secret enemies” (Rousseau 1979, 325).

The worrisome political consequence here is that without love of one's nearest, it is difficult to develop love for the larger community. There appear to be two connections between familial love and patriotism for Rousseau. First, the “unnatural” lessons of cooperation and obligation are more easily learned on the “micro” level of the family—where habit breeds affection, and others are known well—and then extended to larger groups. Second, one is motivated to sacrifice for the state in large part by the protection and other benefits the state offers one's family. In either case, Rousseau's opposition to aristocratic spousal relations is rooted in their failure to move people beyond the self, while responsible, reliable bonds within the family help establish the habits and motives for true political community.

Rousseau also rails against the aristocratic wife “seeking entertainment” in the city, and the bourgeois wife demanding entry into previously male educational and social institutions. In both cases, according to Rousseau, women are not fulfilling their domestic duties. This seems to be both symptom and cause of political problems for him.

Women engaged in activities outside the household may come to see motherhood as a burden. They are apt to try to avoid pregnancy through birth control (Rousseau 1979, 44), to which Rousseau objects vehemently. The basis of his objection is at least in part related to population increase, a familiar concern in eighteenth-century France, where one-quarter of the babies born died before their first birthday. But Rousseau also sees reproduction as a barometer of attitudes toward parental sacrifice and the level of self-interestedness;⁶ in this sense, neglect of domestic duties is a symptom of political problems.

Rousseau in several places focuses on the negative consequences of women's refusal to dedicate themselves to their mates. He responds to women's demand for education in short shrift: “They have no colleges. What a great misfortune! Would God that there were none for boys; they would be more sensibly and decently raised!” (Rousseau 1979, 363). This may be taken as an example of Rousseau's general response to the desire of some women to engage in heretofore male activities, rather than devoting themselves to their families. That is, his response is to question the worth of the (male) enterprise.

To the extent that women's participation in certain arenas expands the mentality of self-interested individualism, it is a cause of continued political decline. In this light, Rousseau's opposition to liberal feminism, with which he was familiar, can be understood as rooted more in an opposition to liberalism than to women's equality. And, it must be noted, Rousseau does not desire men to be self-interested individuals either.

Rousseau also says that if women do not dedicate themselves to the home it will not be a refuge for men, who will then be less devoted to the family (Rousseau 1979, 46), will seek their pleasure elsewhere, and will not fulfill duties owed to their wives and children. Her concentration on her husband, however, causes him to respect and support her—to be a good husband. Once again Rousseau's assumption is that these domestic relationships are not “natural” and that without certain “enticements” to draw people to them, isolation and egoism are likely to prevail. The arrangement he envisions is at least intended to “entice” both sexes and to involve a sharing of the burdens and benefits of social life.

In the bourgeois and aristocratic families Rousseau portrays, the family is of little importance to any of its members. The children are burdensome strangers to the parents, who find their principal pleasures separately outside of the family. None is firmly attached to the others, and each remains self-interested and essentially alone.

Rousseau's vision of the family, however sentimental, is an attempt to control the “civilized” Hobbesian individual. In a world in which the individual is posited as a self-interested actor whose only legitimate obligations are those she or he contracts, Rousseau proposes that the marriage contract should be akin to the social contract—an irrevocable commitment freely undertaken, a set of legitimate chains that makes true community possible.

Conclusion

Rousseau's endorsement of a sex-roled, nuclear, sentimental family has been contrasted with the aristocratic and bourgeois families he rejects. His advocacy of sexual differentiation has been shown to be rooted in his understanding of the human condition. He is concerned with establishing a family that can lead people to be better social creatures, capable of attachments to others that go beyond limited and destructive self-interested liaisons. His argument is that natural independence, self-absorption and asociality, as well as social competitiveness and egoism, must be countered and that a politically effective means is found in the relations of the sexes.

Rousseau's political advocacy of the sex-roled family differs from much anti-feminist argument today. For example, contemporary opponents of extra-familial childcare tend to emphasize the “enormous care” demanded by children, “the nurture and support” only a mother can offer, or how “vitally important” to women mothering is.⁷ Rousseau, as we have seen, does not think a natural nurturing ability or desire exists in either sex and does not assume that only parents can possibly tend to the health and welfare of a child. Rousseau's general defense of sexual differentiation thus also differs from more familiar ones, which frequently appeal to different sexual natures finding fulfillment in different social roles. In fact, Rousseau provides a potent critique of biological determinism that feminists can make use of.

Rousseau at least deserves some credit for not assuming, as do so many figures in the history of political thought, that a certain (usually patriarchal) form of the family is dictated by nature, for not assuming that sex roles are biological givens, for realizing the political centrality of the private, and for calling upon both sexes to transcend narrow individual interests and establish true community. He should also be distinguished from anti-feminists who make harmful or derogatory assumptions about women's potential or character; for example, he does not portray women as inherently more evil, sinful, ignorant, immoral, selfish or selfless than men. While simply condemning Rousseau for advocating sexual differentiation at all, for whatever reason, is tempting, it is worth at least pausing to consider his reasons, and the questions they raise for feminists.

Rousseau assumes that humans are originally asocial and self-interested, that survival requires the overcoming of both of these conditions, and that human malleability allows them to be overcome, though such a task is as difficult as it is important. It is these assumptions that lead Rousseau to endorse sexual differentiation. Its consequences are a major part of the solution to what he sees as the fundamental human dilemma. It is a solution that purports to brings parents together in a common enterprise and to bring each together with children in a situation in which they are bound by love and duty, not just self-interest. That each sex is made “incomplete” by sexual differentiation is usually held against such arrangements by feminists—yet this result is precisely what Rousseau wants, for it creates a reliable need for others, for interdependence, which nature did not take care of and which is essential to survival and non-exploitative relations. Rousseau is concerned that in the quest for equality, for each having the right to live as he or she chooses as an individual, liberals, including liberal feminists, fail to address the instrumental and inherent goods of interdependence and community. While women in his scheme are in a sense treated as means to greater ends, so are men, and the ends are held to be legitimate and advantageous to both. Each must play a part in the whole on which Rousseau's eyes are turned, a part which directs her or him toward certain things and away from others, developing some potentialities in each and leaving others dormant. And it is important to remember here that Rousseau often challenges the supposed superiority of such things as the public over the private realm, abstract over practical reason, and reason over affection. Thus, that both sexes are excluded from certain activities may not result in inequality according to his standards.

Rousseau sees the sentiment of attachment and the lessons of legitimate obligation as best learned in a loving family and as necessary developmental predecessors of unselfish dedication to the common good in the state.⁸ He comes to endorse what feminism will not by his attention to questions that feminists need to show can be answered differently. What devices can we suggest to overcome exploitation and egoism, and develop community? Do the diverse forms of the family feminism supports nourish community? Can any supersede Rousseau's by both alleviating the tension between self-development and care for others, and constructively contributing to politics? It is not enough to say that competitiveness and conflict are not “natural”—indeed, Rousseau would agree! Instead, we need to work out educational, political, and familial institutional arrangements that combat the egoistic, privatistic status quo without the sexual differentiation Rousseau's remedy relies upon. Rousseau's sense of the dangers of forsaking the affectionate, sex-roled family needs to be addressed thoroughly, and showing that his means are unnecessary to and/or destructive of his own ends are avenues to pursue.

Feminist theory raises questions for Rousseau, as well. The motive behind Rousseau's advocacy of the sex-roled, affectionate family is its ability to develop communal bonds, an ability he finds other families lacking; thus, his family is a means to other ends, ends which are both necessary and desirable. Rousseau is not so crude, however, as to argue that the ends justify any means—a family which oppresses any of its members would be both unjustifiable and ineffective. That is, it would not teach us to treat others decently and to sacrifice for them. Thus, like the larger political community, in order to be legitimate the family must involve the members fairly sharing the benefits and burdens of social life, and must in fact establish the equality he deems essential to community.

Since Rousseau's family and society are based on sexual differentiation, the tasks of each sex are different. For feminists, Rousseau must show that these differences, in the family and in politics, really are compatible with equality, and thus with community. Too often anti-feminists simply claim the sexes are different but equal. In the first book devoted to the question of Rousseau's sexual politics, Joel Schwartz seems to follow this trend, for he tends to assume that the fact that women have some power is an argument that the sexes are equally empowered (Schwartz 1984). While he is right to assert that Rousseau's women are not powerless, the burden is on Rousseau to show that different kinds of empowerment really can be compatible with equality, with equal voice and respect for all. For example, is indirect authority, which is what women have most access to, as effectively heard and dignifying as the direct authority to which men have most access? Does Rousseau (or Schwartz) show that the personal and social costs, as well as the positive potential, of the sexually differentiated forms of empowerment in fact balance out?

While anti-feminists are too quick to assert that sexual differentiation poses no problem for equality, feminists should not be too quick to point to any difference as proof of inequality. The differences have to be evaluated in terms of their personal and political consequences. A closer analysis of Rousseau's “balance sheet” would not only help in resolving questions of consistency in his thought, but, in answering the question of when different can be equal, could be part of a truly feminist political theory.