A bright family can isolate an intellectually outmatched patriarch through patronizing dismissal
Evidence
If there were no visitors present, Edna joined in. The father, of course, was the outsider. It was not that anyone was actually rude to him, relatives and friends would recall. His family’s attitude was, rather, amiably patronizing. In the words of one visitor, “It was the kind of thing where, when Emanuel said something, the kids would say good-naturedly, ‘Oh, Dad! Oh, Father!’ And then they’d go right on with what they had been saying. It was as if everyone, including him, had sort of accepted the fact that he had nothing to contribute.” After he moved to New York, Emanuel Moses did a lot of reading. “Reading,” he would often say, “is the solace of old age.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 155
Categorization
- SEED: The family dynamic here — brilliant wife and children amicably but constantly overruling the father — is the seed of the book’s argument that Robert Moses’ arrogance was cultivated at home, where his father was the one person treated as a non-contributor.
- XREF: connects to: The family means-test undermined working-class men’s masculine status — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 215; The family structure cannot survive the loss of the father’s ordinary image — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 697; Bourgeois flourishing depended on father’s societal role grounding family authority and education — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 620 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- The family structure cannot survive the loss of the father’s ordinary image
#corroborates(0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 697 - Bourgeois flourishing depended on father’s societal role grounding family authority and education
#corroborates(0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 620 - The family means-test undermined working-class men’s masculine status
#complicates(0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 215 - Family interventions into spiritual involvement can humiliate rather than persuade the target
#corroborates(0.75) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 468