For many people, the Family is not a site of unconditional support, love, and care. The Family instead offers the first instances of violence, punishment, degradation, abuse, and shame that someone experiences in their life. And yet, such victims are expected to wipe the butt of their first abuser

Cardi B could likely afford private home care if/when the time comes for her. Her intentional decision to have multiple children points to something more moralistic, that proper people ought to have a proper capital "f" Family who are obligated to provide care for you when you're old and disabled

Family abolitionists like M.E. O'Brien point out that because the cishet, abled, and normative Nuclear Family is a highly valorized and idealized site/relation of care, where your family must care for you purely because are family. People are told to have a family in the hope of receiving good care

In the US, the care landscape is bleak. M.E. O'Brien has described the 3 ways people get care in the US racial capitalist system:

You have biological family who provide care

You have money to pay for it (the market)

The government provides care to you if you're eligible

All 3 have serious flaws

What are some questions a fanily abolitionist framework might pose?

Why do nursing homes and long term care facilities have to be bad?

Is it bad to be cared for by people who are trained/paid to do care work?

Is it fair to expect long term care from your kids? What if they don't like you?

Cardi B is one of many people who implicitly fear being abandoned in old age by those we personally know and warhoused in long care facilities, surrounded by strangers, and unable to set the terms of our care.

Much better to conscript the biological children you birthed for that purpose, right?

I ask this without any hostility: what do you think the concept should be called, instead?

Family abolition is about ending the state’s exploitation of family as a stand-in for public infrastructure. No housing? Rely on family. No healthcare? Family. No safety net? Family. The neoliberal family formation is privately subsidized state abandonment dressed with a sentimental smokescreen.