Have you ever wondered why countries likeEngland and the Netherlands (the Anglo-Saxon world in general), have generated political systems centred on: early individualism, distrust of the invasive state and strong liberalism? In contrast to their neighbours, (only geographically from a European perspective), France of the Paris basin, Spain, Greece or Poland?

Political systems are not born out of a vacuum: they are also born out of the way one grows up, inherits and experiences family.

The European family structure has influenced the way people conceive of freedom, authority, the individual and the state.

It is no coincidence that some European countries defend theindividual above all else, while others seem to privilege order, belonging and authority.

In order to fully understand the socio-political dynamics that have determined the rise of our current European governments, it is necessary to abandon all forms of cultural preconceptions in order to analyse how European political differences derive not only from modern ideologies, but from family structures that have been sedimented for centuries.

What the nuclear family is and why it still matters today

But what is the nuclear family? Why is it still necessary today to disclose in detail the specifics of its impact?

The nuclear family is the family model consisting of two parents(father and mother) and their children, living in the same household. It is the most widespread form in the West and represents the basic unit, as distinct from the extended family that includes uncles and grandparents.

Although the term is relatively recent, according to the Cambridge Dictionary it dates back to 1947, historically this structure began to spread in Europe as early as the 14th-15th centuries, particularly in the cities, and was fully consolidated in the period ofindustrialisation.

It is evident how it favours a small number of family members, in contrast to non-European realities such asAfrica where, depending on the region, many traditional societies embrace the idea of extended family or very strong parental networks: the community always comes before the individual.

England and the birth of modern individualism

When we speak of protagonists on the European political scene,England is one of the first names to turn the spotlight on itself, not only because of the numerous controversies surrounding the Brexit, but above all because of its imperious ability to placeideological independence at the centre of its demands, which has brought it to where it is today.

In the pre-industrial English system, the nuclear family favoured the stabilisation of a society geared towards the dissemination of individual values extended in contexts such as the parish, avoiding large family clans, contributing to the ennobling of property and the importance of contract, wages and individual mobility.

The so-called European Marriage Pattern, studied by John Hajnal, describes north-western Europe, including England, as an area of later marriage, greater celibacy/marriage and formation of a new independent home after marriage.

This contributed to non-indifferent political consequences: if the extended family was not fully responsible for absorbing sickness and old age, or unemployment and poverty, then the intervention of a local public structure was inevitable. Hence the extreme relevance of the Poor Laws, especially the Elizabethan law of 1601, which entrusted the parishes with the responsibility for the poor.

It would be incorrect, and partially limiting, to argue that the nuclear family alone created the English state, but helped to make it irreversibly more administrative, local, fiscal and regulatory.

Industrialisation, wages and social transformation

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the nuclear family changed its function: whereas previously most productivity was concentrated in domestic or rural activities, as production moved to the cities the family became more a unit of consumption and reproduction of labour power, while the protagonist of social life was now the individual wage.

When England then gave full rein to its internal colonialist drive around the 19th century, its empire was often thought of as an extension of a domestic and moral model: theVictorian ideology of the family became a grammar ofimperialism.

Recent studies of the family in theBritish Empire show that family relationships were central to understanding, migration, colonial power, identity and imperial administration.

Emigration to populating colonies such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa was seen as the perfect transplantation of British families, with the aim of validating their own model of a respectable nuclear family to be used later as an example.

In this historical perspective, the difficult relationship between the UK and European integration also appears less surprising.

France and Germany: two opposing state models

But could we talk about Europe without a direct confrontation between Germany and France?

Heterozygotic twins both governed by the ambition to lead Europe, but opposed in the methods of achieving that goal. Whereas France has always based its credo on political and civil centralisation, Germany has focused onsocial, economic and disciplinaryorganisation.

Their sense of historical legitimacy vis-à-vis the European throne has driven them to be rivals constantly oscillating between conflict and cooperation.

In France, the nuclear family generally develops as a unit of ownership, hereditary transmission and basis of citizenship.

Its role changed drastically after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Code of 1804, the family being regulated directly by the State: civil marriage, equal inheritance between children, public registration and the centrality of the State in private life.

In the 19th century France remained more rural than Germany and England, which foreshadowed a considerable political and social space occupied by the small peasant family owner.

In contrast to France, Germany developed a more disciplinary and social nuclear family system: before unification in 1871, many areas of Germany were mainly organised around patriarchal authority and the family-people. With the expansion of industrial society, Germany is able to build a highly organised society based on: wage labour, bureaucracy, welfare and social insurance.

After 1945, what distinguishes it from its European neighbours is the complete integration of the family model into a basis of its own social market economy.

What makes France and Germany politically close relatives, as previously mentioned, is the presence of the state as a guarantor of the balance of their society, avoiding entrusting their welfare to the market as in the case of the Anglo-Saxon model.

However, both still believe in transforming the family into a basis of national stability, creating political systems based on a strong state, social protection and the centrality of the middle class.

France is strongly consistent with the historical fear of demographic decline; investing in family allowances, parental leave, childcare and support for working mothers. Their logic makes no bones: “A stable republic needs solid families and children.”

If for France the family is the foundation of everything, according to Germany a disorganised society can never create a solid family unit.

The Russian model: the state over the individual

There is often a tendency to consider Russia culturally European as far as Moscow is concerned: in purely geographical terms this is so, but if one takes a close look at the foundations of the Russian state, it is one of the most distant models of the European state. A huge, centralised, vertical state before it even has an ethically aware civil society. The state is the only driving force that citizens must orbit around making it the top priority of their lives.

Not surprisingly, during tsarist Russia, the mir was a rural community that redistributed land among families and assiduously controlled social life.

In fact, it was defined by theEncyclopaedia Britannica as the traditional Russian peasant community system with collective land ownership and shared responsibilities.

In a society like Russia, today as in the past, theindividual is only a pawn that facilitates the advancement of the state in the great chessboard of the world.

Family, power and contemporary political models

There are states that create citizens, states that organise society, and states that simultaneously dominate and protect society; such results are still visible in today’s geopolitical landscape.