The Hite Report on the Family: Growing Up Under Patriarchy

This report considers contemporary family life, observing that many families no longer fit the model for "successful" family life. Does this mean that the family is in crisis? Or are the cracks in its structure symptoms of the need for more democracy in the family and a radical new attitude towards sex and intimacy? This book looks into psycho-sexual identity within the nuclear family and aims to provide a new perspective to the debate. Men and women, teenage boys and girls, answer the Hite questionnaire and reveal their experiences of family life. Hite draws on these results to make her conclusions about lives inside family walls. The book details the subjects of: sensuality, eroticism and the boundaries of physical intimacy; parents attitudes to their children's developing sexuality; learning "masculinity" and "femininity"; erotic undercurrents in parent-child relationships; violent physical intimacy and its link with sexuality; and physic loyalties and betrayals between parents and children.