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This Element will be about Hegel’s concept of the family. Before I turn to this topic, a few words about the family today. The family is a controversial institution. There are many for whom it represents an invaluable and indispensable sanctuary in human life. Then there are many for whom it leaves much to be desired. The family has often been described as a source of unhappiness that can fill thousand-page novels; of unfreedom that subjects individuals to arbitrary control; of inequality in the form of inherited advantages and disadvantages. Anti-racists have argued that the family has been used as a tool of racist control, forcing people of color to conform to a family ideal all the while ravaging their kinship relations. And feminists have criticized the family for entrenching gender roles and in effect inculcating these roles into the next generation, for not only does the family compel women to shoulder the lion’s share of domestic labor, it also teaches children who are closely watching their parents’ lives that this is what they can expect from their own. The family as a form of life moreover seems to be without viable alternative, for people who opt out of forming families often face social isolation and alienation. Even though its modern variant is historically contingent, the family has grown so deep-seated that it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the family. To be fair, the family is not (or no longer) monolithic, for there has been a proliferation of different forms of family life. With the advent of same-sex marriage, the family has ceased to be an exclusively heterosexual institution. There are also groups of people that found families without being married, monogamous, or related to those they parent. Some families involve the raising of young people, others do not. All of this suggests that there is a case to be made that the family proves to be plastic, capable of innovation and diversification. This raises questions about what exactly constitutes a family and what differentiates a family from other forms of association. But it does show that the concept of the family, however families are ultimately circumscribed, continues its hold. You might even think that this plasticity contributes to the long life that the family enjoys. In Véronique Munoz-Dardé’s words, “The family strikes us as an immutable institution because it changes constantly . . . it is the instability of social understanding of what constitutes a proper family, and proper family relations, which has allowed for the persistence of the family.” In this light, we might think that there is no reason to bother trying to imagine the end of the family. Maybe we should instead continue to reform the family, rather than look for other options. That said, there has been a newfound interest in a tradition known as family abolition, which spans across figures such as Charles Fourier, Alexandra Kollontai, and Shulamith Firestone and today Sophie Lewis and M. E. O’Brien. Although they have different proposals for abolishing the family, they are united in their criticism of the family as such. This tradition’s guiding idea is that there is something about the family as a form that makes it objectionable in spite of the many mutations that families are undeniably undergoing. No matter how much families change, there are features of the family that remain constant, features that belong to the family as a concept. Here I want to highlight two before explaining what makes them objectionable. The first feature of the family form is that the family is expected to be the primary source of care for its members. This care is both emotional and material: We expect our family members to help us when we are, say, sick, but also to supply a sense of connection and belonging. This is true for adults, but it is especially true for children, who depend on their families for the satisfaction of virtually all of their needs. It is because families provide care that many people continue to be attached to them, both in practice and in theory.