Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [517]

The family could not actually be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 517

Note

This is the internalized panopticon taken to its logical limit — the watchful other is no longer a guard in a tower but one’s own child, and intimacy becomes the surveillance channel. ‘Surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately’ inverts the comfort of being known.