On how subordination and oppressioned are learned

“It is in this form of the family where most children first learn the meaning and practice of hierarchical, authoritarian rule. Here is where they learn to accept group oppression against themselves as non-adults, and where they learn to accept male supremacy and the group oppression of women. Here is where they learn that it is the male’s role to work in the community and control the economic life of the family and to meter out the physical and financial punishments and rewards, and the female’s role to provide the emotional warmth associated with motherhood while under the economic rule of the male. Here is where the relationship of superordination – subordination, of superior-inferior, of master-slave is first learned and accepted as ‘natural.’”

John Hodge, Cultural Bases of Racism and Group Oppression, 1975.