Decline of middle-class ownership eroded the family’s role and paternal authority

Evidence

The decay of middle-class possession, the disappearance of the free economic subject, affects the family: it is no longer the formerly landed cell of society, because it no longer constitutes the basis of the citizen’s economic existence. Young people no longer have the family as the horizon of their developing lives; the autonomy of the father disappears, and with it resistance to his authority. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 88

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows later Frankfurt-school themes of the authoritarian character and the dissolving ego; connects to Adorno’s later work on the family under late capitalism. — connects to: The liquidation of independent enterprise destroyed the dignity of the bourgeois father — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 116; Paternal authority within families diminishes with unemployment — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 690; Interwar experts saw parental authority declining across European families — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 560 (+10 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The liquidation of independent enterprise destroyed the dignity of the bourgeois father — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 116; Paternal authority within families diminishes with unemployment — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 690; Interwar experts saw parental authority declining across European families — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 560 (+10 more)