Sexual Warfare as Family Style

Few things hold us like home. The current celebration of traditional family values expresses a need for refuge, pleasure, and acceptance that is as impossible to forgo as it is difficult to satisfy. If nostalgia for the past is largely a sign of present frustration, it has only served to heighten interest in what makes families fail. A burgeoning genre—the family anti-romance—is appealing to that fascination with things gone wrong: the horror show of failed intimacy. The ease with which i...