The Strict Father Model

Liberal Berkeley professor George Lakoff wants to educate his fellow liberals on Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust. He tries to explain conservatives in this 1995 essay as if they were a tribe in Borneo with completely alien practices and values. In particular, he argues that their unreasonable political views stem from their unusual family life, which he describes:

The Strict Father Model. A traditional nuclear family with the father having primary responsibility for the well-being of the household. The mother has day-to-day responsibility for the care of the house and details of raising the children. But the father has primary responsibility for setting overall family policy, and the mother's job is to be supportive of the father and to help carry out the father's views on what should be done. Ideally, she respects his views and supports them.

Life is seen as fundamentally difficult and the world as fundamentally dangerous. Evil is conceptualized as a force in the world, and it is the father's job to support his family and protect it from evils -- both external and internal. External evils incLude enemies, hardships, and temptations. Internal evils come in the form of uncontrolled desires and are as threatening as external ones. The father embodies the values needed to make one's way in the world and to support a family: he is morally strong, self-disciplined, frugal, temperate, and restrained. He sets an example by holding himself to high standards. He insists on his moral authority, commands obedience, and when he doesn't get it, metes out retribution as fairly and justly as he knows how. It is his job to protect and support his family, and he believes that safety comes out of strength.

In addition to support and protection, the father's primary duty is tell his children what is right and wrong, punish them when they do wrong, and to bring them up to be self-disciplined and self-reliant. Through self-denial, the children can build strength against internal evils. In this way, he teaches his children to be self-disciplined, industrious, polite, trustworthy, and respectful of authority.

The strict father provides nurturance and expresses his devotion to his family by supporting and protecting them, but just as importantly by setting and enforcing strict moral bounds and by inculcating self-discipline and self-reliance through hard work and self-denial. This builds character. For the strict father, strictness is a form of nurturance and love -- tough love.

The strict father is restrained in showing affection and emotion overtly, and prefers the appearance of strength and calm. He gives to charity as an expression of compassion for those less fortunate than he and as an expression of gratitude for his own good fortune.

Once his children are grown -- once they have become self-disciplined and self-reliant -- they are on their own and must succeed or fail by themselves; he does not meddle in their lives, just as he doesn't want any external authority meddling in his life.

A reader suggests that maybe liberal shrinks and social workers have pegged me as being from a conservative family, and therefore I have an incorrigibly retro view of family life.

Here is an article following Lakoff's ideas:

In my article on November 12, 2008, I discussed the need to build a progressive empathetic foundation to at least match if not surpass the well developed and obesely funded conservative single-party foundation that brought us torture, preemptive war and now an economic disaster to compare with no less than The Great Depression. In my article on November 25, 2008, I discussed replacing the “you’re on your own,” “empathy deficit,” conservative cognitive policy with an empathic progressive cognitive policy. In this posting, I will try to describe the two individual worldviews behind these policies.

We are a country with basically a two party system. These two parties have come to represent two worldviews: conservative and progressive. Wehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif are also a country where our brains have two modes of thought which coincide with these two worldviews. These worldview are impacted by our capacity, or lack there of, for empathy, which can easily be killed by fear. ...

In The Conservative Worldview section of The Nation as a Family, the strong Strict Father model results in the conservative worldview:

“The world is, and always will be, a dangerous and difficult place.”
“It is a competitive world and there will always be winners and losers.”
“Children are naturally bad since they want to do what feels good, not what is moral, so they have to be made good by being taught discipline.”
“There is tangible evil in the world and to stand up to evil, one must be morally strong, or ‘disciplined.’”

In The Progressive Worldview section of The Nation as a Family, the strong Nurturant Parent model results in the progressive worldview:

“It is assumed that the world is basically good.”
“… however dangerous and difficult the world may be at present, it can be made better, and it is your responsibility to help make it better.”
“… children are born good, and parents can make them better, and it is their responsibility to do so.”
“Both parents (if there are two) are responsible for running the household and raising the children, although they may divide their activities. “
“The parents’ job is to be responsive to their children, nurture them, and raise their children to nurture others.”
“Nurturance requires empathy and responsibility.”

I think that Lakoff is a nut living in a liberal academic bubble. But Santa Cruz is also a liberal bubble. I don't know what to make of this strict father model. Do the textbooks really teach it as some sort of anachronism that ought to be eliminated? Is there a left-wing anti-paternalism conspiracy to attack conservative family values and promote more spending on social programs? Is empathy a political codeword? This will take some further research.