In this critique of the family most of my paradigmatic references will concern primarily the nuclear family unit in capitalist society in this part of this century. The broader reference, however, and most of my general statements will cover the social functioning of the family as an ideological conditioning device (the nonhuman phrasing is deliberate and necessary) in any exploitative society - slave society, feudal society, capitalist society from its most primitive phase in the last century to the non-colonizing societies in the world today.