Family

The family is a kin unit of whatever size, extending from large clans to the four-person nuclear family. While the family historically was the most important social unit for man and even held spiritual importance for most religions, in the modern epoch, when man has become "free from the bonds of nature, etc., which in former epochs of history made him a part of a definite limited conglomeration", the family has become less and less important socially, and, in most cases among the bourgeoisie and even among many workers, a merely economic relationship, another case where money ties have replaced genuine social ties:

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

Many take this line in the Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital." to mean communists support abolition of the family, but this is a total misunderstanding which shows they didn't even understand the sentence. Socialism would mean sublation (Aufhebung) of the bourgeois family, not the family itself or every kind of family. This means abolition of the bourgeois "family" and the return or preservation of true families based only on social, not cash, ties, to all members of society, total abolition of polyamory - adultery, polygamy, and reddit polyamory - and prostitution. And, as Engels said in Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State:

We are now approaching a social revolution in which the economic foundations of monogamy as they have existed hitherto will disappear just as surely as those of its complement-prostitution. Monogamy arose from the concentration of considerable wealth in the hands of a single individual – a man – and from the need to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man and of no other. For this purpose, the monogamy of the woman was required, not that of the man, so this monogamy of the woman did not in any way interfere with open or concealed polygamy on the part of the man. But by transforming by far the greater portion, at any rate, of permanent, heritable wealth – the means of production – into social property, the coming social revolution will reduce to a minimum all this anxiety about bequeathing and inheriting. Having arisen from economic causes, will monogamy then disappear when these causes disappear?

One might answer, not without reason: far from disappearing, it will, on the contrary, be realized completely. For with the transformation of the means of production into social property there will disappear also wage-labor, the proletariat, and therefore the necessity for a certain – statistically calculable – number of women to surrender themselves for money. Prostitution disappears; monogamy, instead of collapsing, at last becomes a reality – also for men.

Promoting the family and traditional family values was a central project of historical socialist countries and current socialist countries like China, although there has been conflict with left deviationists who wanted to "abolish the family". As the 1944 Family Edict of the USSR said:

Caring for children and mothers and strengthening the family has always been one of the most important tasks of the Soviet state. Protecting the interests of mother and child, the state provides significant financial assistance to pregnant women and mothers for the maintenance and upbringing of children.

The 1936 Soviet constitution had this policy:

The family enjoys the protection of the state. Marriage is based on the free consent of the woman and the man; the spouses are completely equal in their family relations. The state helps the family by providing and developing a broad system of childcare institutions, by organising and improving communal services and public catering, by paying grants on the birth of a child, by providing children's allowances and benefits for large families, and other forms of family allowances and assistance.

Some point to the 1920 legalization of abortion as contradicting this, but this idea is based on an ignorance of the circumstances surrounding this legalization and the rationale. The original decree says:

During the past decades the number of women resorting to artificial discontinuation of pregnancy has grown both in the West and in this country. The legislation of all countries combats this evil by punishing the woman who chooses to have an abortion and the doctor who makes it. Without leading to favorable results, this method of combating abortions has driven the operation underground and made the woman a victim of mercenary and often ignorant quacks who make a profession of secret operations. As a result, up to 50 per cent of such woman are infected in the course of operation, and up to 4 per cent of them die.

The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government is conscious of this serious evil to the community. It combats this evil by propaganda against abortions among working women. By working for socialism, and by introducing the protection of maternity and infancy on an extensive scale, it feels assured of achieving the gradual disappearance of this evil. But as the moral survivals of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present still compel many women to resort to this operation, the People’s Commissariats of Health and of Justice, anxious to protect the health of the women and considering that the method of repressions in this field fails entirely to achieve this aim, have decided...etc.

Once the situation had improved, abortion was again criminalized in 1936:

Only under conditions of socialism, where exploitation of man by man does not exist and where woman is an equal member of society, while the continual improvement of the material well-being of the toilers constitutes a law of social development, is it possible seriously to organize the struggle against abortions by prohibitive laws as well as by other means.

The abolition of capitalist exploitation in the USSR, the growth of material well-being and the gigantic growth of the political and cultural level of the toilers make it possible to raise question of a revision of the decision of the People’s Commissariats of Health and Justice of November 18, 1920.

Necessary material provision for women and their children, State aid to large families, the utmost development of the network of maternity homes, nurseries, kindergartens, legislative establishment of minimum sums which the father of a child must pay for its upkeep when husband and wife live apart, on the one hand, and prohibition of abortions on the other, coupled with an increase in the penalty for willful non-payment of the means for the maintenance of the children awarded by a court, and the introduction of certain changes in the legislation on divorce for the purpose of combating a light-minded attitude towards the family and family obligations-such are the roads which must be followed in order to solve this important problem affecting the entire population. In this respect, the Soviet Government responds to numerous statements made by toiling women.

Abortion was never supported on ideological grounds as some plot to destroy the family, as many say. Lenin opposed abortions and Malthusianism but sought to combat abortion through improving economic conditions and making the choice between having a child and living in poverty, starvation, etc. unnecessary. This opposition contrasts to the bourgeois conservative opposition we see today, who only care about the baby until it's born.

[Expand & add detail on history, evolution of family, etc.]