How Does Rousseau Enter The Social Contract?

When Rousseau talks about the familial relationship between a father and child, he displays the social contract’s evident role in liberty and equality, so then is family similar to slavery? The social contract is the agreement between two parties, which in this case it is between the father and his child. The social contract can only exist through agreement. The “laws of nature” dictate that man must ensure his survival, and only if he can secure it may he be allowed to be “his own master”. To become his “own master”, a man must enter the social contract. Entering into the social contract, he gives up his “natural” liberty and his right to be an individual in exchange for his will to be dissolved into society’s agenda (Rousseau 9). According to Rousseau, liberty is defined two ways: natural and civil liberty. Civil

Family is natural in the sense that it is the closest structure to the nature of our life roles. It has given context to the idea that to be in a society, there must be hierarchical order that has been agreed upon. The social contract does not promote equality and pushes a more constricted definition of liberty. In the case of the father and child, the child becomes the father’s equal as an adult. However, the social contract is not reliant on the equality of everyone involved. Therefore, even as an adult, the child may have to still answer to their father. Why might this be? The children as adults may know how to survive but it might be in the best interest of the both individuals that the father is involved. Since family is a sovereign, it is full of “constituent individuals [the father and child], it doesn’t and can’t have any interest contrary to theirs; so there’s no need for it to provide its subjects with guarantee ·of treating them well, because the [contract] can’t possibly wish to hurt all its members” (Rousseau 8). The child is less of a slave as he grows