What Is Patriarchy? How Do Feminists Used This Term To Understand The Family?

Patriarchy is a system that has denied males access to full emotional well-being. Patriarchy requires male dominance by any means neccessary, hence it supports, promotes, and condones sexist violence. We hear the most about sexist violence in public discourses about rape and abuse by domestic partners. But the most comon forms of patriarchal violence are those that take place in the home between patriarchal parents and children. The point of such violence is usually to reinforce a dominator model, in which the authority figure is deemed ruler over those without power and given the right  to maintain that rule through practice of subjugation,subordination, and submission.the contemporary presence of female-headed households has led many people to assume that children in these households are not learning patriarchal values because no male is present. They assume that men are the sole teachers of patriarchal thinking. Yet many female-heade households endorse and promote patriarchal thinking with far greater passion than two-parent households. Because they don't have an experiential reality to challenge false fantasies of gender roles, women in such households are far more likely to idealize the patriarchal male role and patriarchal men than are women who live with patriarchal men every day. We need to highlight the role women patriarchal in perpetuating and sustaining patriarchal culture so that  we will recognize patriarchy as a system women and men support equally, even if men receive more rewards from the system.

Have patriarchal elements of organized religion affected your relationship to religion and spirituality?

     Patriarchy is the echelon of familial roles. Normally, since the societal structure of North America was established, the leader or head of the family in any household, was the father. The conventional family was comprised of both parental figures, mother and father, unlike the statistics in these modern times that show a greater percentage of single-parent families, due to the economic pressures of maintaining a degree of prosperity for the integrity of family unity.
 
      The feminist view would generally focus on the patriarchal role of the mother in any family situation, regardless if there was a presence of the father in the family unit or not. According the the view of feminists, especially since the development of a liberation movement of women's equal rights, their voice changed the overall outlook of the patriarchal position or role of women in the conventional and non-conventional family unit. Naturally, a feminist would stress the role of a single-parent female because this would demonstrate how a woman could successfully raise a child or children, just as effectively as a man could however, in conventional terms, a male figure would be lacking in that family unit, therefore, affecting the children's overall emotional and mental develpment and fitness.
 
     Therefore, the patriarchal position of either a father or mother requires the presence of both for the overall emotional and mental integrity of a child or children in that particular situation. The radical feminist may lead us to believe, however, that a single-mother can compensate for the absence of the patriarchal position of the male role as a father for a child's or children's overall emotional and mental well-being. There is no degree of compensation that can replace the presence of the patriarchal position of a male role model or father-figure within the structure of a family unit.
 
     That is not to say, at any rate, that the absence of either the patriarchal presence of a mother or father role-model is unacceptable or that any child raised by a single parent of either gender, is enitrely detrimental to the overall integrity of the child's or children's upbringing, as though there would be great damaging effects to the emotional and mental welfare of a child or children in any single-parent family. Assuming of course, that either the single parent as a mother or father do not have any emotional or mental problems or addictions that would create a whole new paradigm of problems for any child or children exposed to the afflicted single parent.
 
     For the most part, insofar as the feminist understanding of the family unit, they may naturally lean more in favor of a single parent mother raising a child or children successfully, on their own because women are just as capable as men to provide for their child or children by monetary means or financial resources. So, basically, a feminist may conclude that if there were any detrimental effects present, at all, to any degree, within the structure of only the presence of a single-parent female, patriarchal role-model, upon the integrity or overall well-being of a child or children within this type of family unit, it would most likley be the lack of experiencing how those children may discover what it is like to interact with a male, boy or man at any age.