When I was a young child, my brother and I had nannies. They minded us while my parents, both of them, were at work most of the day. They were live-ins, and I think that they were part of the shadow economy. Our folks didn’t have much, but they could afford undocumented childcare if they both worked. I suspect that many families with children, especially those in the lowest 50% of the income spectrum, find themselves in similar circumstances today.
According to Wikipedia, the term nanny state is attributed to British MP Iain Macleod who used it back in 1965. It referred to a government that curtailed personal liberty for the good of the governed – an infantilization of the governed by their government. It has been used many times in different ways across the globe.
Here in the USA, I have most often heard the term wielded by conservatives decrying the actions of governmental agencies in regulating corporate rather than individual activities. There are exceptions, course.
- Motocycle helmet laws? Nanny State!
- Automobile seatbelt laws? Nanny State!
But more often, I think the examples are:
- Pollution standards? Nanny State!
- Regulation of hazardous substances? Nanny State!
- Testing for the carcinogenic potential of consumer products? Nanny State!
- etc.
What brings all of this to mind is that the paternalistic Daddy State has governed European and American life for at least a couple of centuries, if not longer. Hardly ever does anyone make a big deal of it. The Daddy State is the paternalistic current that runs through religion, politics, medicine, law, the military and just about everything in our lives. The Alito draft of the reversal of Roe v Wade is the perfect modern example of the Daddy State. It asserts that a woman cannot make life-altering decisions regarding her own body without her state legislature, comprised mostly of men, setting out the guardrails if not total prohibitions regarding those decisions.
That’s the Daddy State. All such relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, and male and female lovers are inherently asymmetric. And when those asymmetries lead to asymmetric exercise of power, abuse of the less powerful by the more powerful is almost guaranteed. When that abuse becomes intolerable, violence inevitably follows.
Remember this.