Leviathan - Familiar Family of Hobbes

Before the line of succession can be determined, the patriarch/matriarch must first be decided upon. If there is no contract (i.e. marriage), but children, then the mother must be the head of the family, because only she knows, in certainty, the paternity of the child. When she, and only she, has this powerful information, she is the dominant figure in the family (254). If the woman enters into the contract of marriage, then she concedes the sovereignty of the family to her husband. Once the dominant figurehead in the family has been decided upon, there is then the line of succession. At the top of this family tree is the patriarch (or matriarch), with their descendents below them. This continues on down to the end of the line. Power is transferred through the family tree to the oldest male in the next generation (or, if there is no male, to the female). Each person having some sort of dominion over those lower in the tree to them, all the way back up to the top, where the dominant "monarch" of the family is, and has total dominion over the entire family.

If Hobbes is right about human nature, then it is completely moral for someone within the family to challenge for the position of dominant patriarch. If man is constantly at war with one another, then familial bounds should have no bearing on the feelings one family member should have toward another in terms of power. The family is thus just like a government. The family has entered into a contract, as have citizens of a nation, and given up some rights to have others protected. But, just as the monarch of a nation can be dethroned, so can the patriarch of a family.

In a Hobbesean society, familial relationships would be different than they are today. Where as today, the parents of each nuclear family within a family tree are the primary leaders in that nuclear family, with little or no authority coming from higher up (their parents, or their parents' parents) in the family tree, Hobbes would suggest a monarchic family with one central ruler at the top, holding dominion over everything (all people and property) in the family. But, the Hobbesean family is also one in which there is always a fear of challenge to the throne, as is the case in human nature.