Prominent Israeli Politician: Families Are Bad for Kids

Appearing on Australian TV last month, Merav Michaeli, a Member of Knesset with the Labor Party and one of Israel’s most prominent politicians, called the traditional nuclear family inherently unsafe for children, and advocated for the state to make all parenting decisions.

“The total custody that we have in this structure of marriage,” Michaeli said, “which still gives men complete domination over their children and, too often, over the women, who are called wives, is part of the ongoing hurt of children.” The answer, she added, was “breaking apart” the traditional family, and instead having a state-run mechanism that decided who gets custody of children—Michaeli emphasized that biological parents should receive no special preference—and how children should be raised.

This is not Michaeli’s first flirtation with this theme: In 2012, she gave a Ted Talk titled “Cancel Marriage,” in which she argued that all forms of sanctioned communion between two people were inherently oppressive and should be banned.

Below is the video of Michaeli’s TV appearance, which you may not want to watch with your children: