This book reminds us of the importance of theorizing the family/state relationship. Eileen Hunt Botting argues that while Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke proposed different versions of a patriarchal structuring of the family in contrast to Mary Wollstonecraft's egalitarian version, the three eighteenth-century theorists shared a view of the function of the family as providing the relational and moral foundations for the state. To relate as a father, husband, son, wife, sister, or daughter was to learn how to sympathize, and to work for a common purpose, both of which were absolutely necessary for developing patriotic feelings and civic virtue. The significance of the book goes beyond taking us back to the Enlightenment origins of the notion of the family as an agent of political socialization. It raises crucial questions about Wollstonecraft's status as a canonical democratic theorist; it also suggests fascinating implications for how political theory could make a contribution to our contemporary conversations on gay families, religion and the family, and the clash of civilizations and the family.

To construct her argument, Botting presents a careful, nuanced reading of the political and theoretical development of each theorist's position. Her interpretive method uncovers internal logics and intentions that interconnect an impressive range of writings. She constructs the theories of Rousseau and Burke so that their influences on and similarities with Wollstonecraft can be emphasized. This method leads to the conclusion that Wollstonecraft won the debate on the best family/state relationship, because the egalitarian structuring of the family is the dominant view today within liberal-democratic states.

Chapter 1 analyzes five books by Rousseau and presents the logic of his functional analysis of the agrarian family suited for a small republic. Rousseau assumed that the corrupting dangers of women's sexuality would be overcome only through a patriarchal ordering of the family. He criticized the mixing in public of the sexes. Though he confined women to the family, he opened up the possibility of the empowerment of women by allocating to wives and mothers the role of reinforcing in their husbands and inculcating in their male children the virtues they needed to be good citizens. Rousseau also proposed a more humane approach to the education of children.

Chapter 2 uncovers the genealogy of Burke's defense of the hierarchical family “as a transcultural moral foundation of stable civilizations and political regimes” (p. 73). Chapter 3 provides an interpretation of Burke as a philosopher who supported his political defense of the hierarchical family with a combination of Christian natural law and an aesthetic theory that rested on a gendered notion of qualities and virtues. Unlike Rousseau, Burke was not focused on defending only his vision of the healthiest family. In his condemnation of the practice of the British East India Company to repress the polygamous family, he championed the practice in India of noble men having more than one family. For Botting, Burke's tolerant attitude demonstrated his support of “the hierarchical family in all its culturally unique manifestations” (p. 83).

Chapter 4 makes the case for Wollstonecraft as a systematic political theorist because of the metaphysical, theological foundations of her thought, which evolved through three stages. She began as “a traditional trinitarian Anglican”; she moved on to become “a rationalist Socinian Christian Dissenter”; she ended up “a Romantic deist, skeptic, and possible atheist” (p. 134). The middle phase is the most relevant. In this period, she argued that the function of the family as “a schoolhouse for the moral and civic virtues” (p. 11) would be achieved only if women's rational capacities were educated and if the family was constructed on an egalitarian basis. Her central insight was that the hierarchical family structure undermined the ability of the husband/father and the wife/mother to perform their crucial roles as teachers and practioners of civic virtue and love of country. Botting defines three characteristics of Wollstonecraft's required egalitarian structure of the family: equal rights between wife and husband, equal inheritance rights among the children, and a respectful relationship between parents and children.

Botting's presentation of this eighteenth-century conversation on the family as “a kind of sibling rivalry” (p. 191) has important implications for thinking about the place of feminist theory within the canon of political theory. For a modern audience, we can bracket Rousseau's gender biases as anachronistic, and simply add women to his notion of citizenship. Yet this approach hides the crucial contribution of feminist political thinking. Without Wollstonecraft in the canon of democratic theorists, we cannot answer the question of how we thought our way out of the patriarchal family structure to envision an egalitarian family structure that could support a healthy democratic state. By showing how Wollstonecraft's theory was absolutely necessary for the actualization of what Rousseau and Burke intended for the political function of the family, Botting makes the definitive case that Wollstonecraft belongs in the canon.

Finally, Family Feuds suggests three areas in which political theorists drawing on the Enlightenment approach to the family could contribute to contemporary discussions of the family. The first area involves the debate over gay marriage and family values. By focusing on the family as the inculcator of civic virtue, Botting's analysis suggests the need to enlarge the discussion of the kinds of values that are important within the family and whether or not the sexual orientation of the parents is the crucial factor. Why cannot civic virtue be taught by two fathers or two mothers? The second area refers to the relationship between religion and the egalitarian family. Botting's privileging of the Christian theological foundations of Wollstonecraft's vision of the family reminds us that gender equality has deep roots in Christianity. The third area shows how the Enlightenment treatment of the family challenges a simplistic understanding of the relationship between the East and the West. Rousseau argued for segregating men and women at the theater and in public spaces; Burke defended polygamy. Wollstonecraft equated the position of women in the West with “the concubines in an ‘eastern harem’” (p. 84). By uncovering the richness of the Enlightenment conversation on the family, Botting makes an invaluable contribution to a rethinking of the genesis of the Western commitment to gender equality in the family.