Partnership Studies 4: Childhood, Partnership Systems, and Overcoming Domination Culture

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/26

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She received the Humanist Pioneer Award, and in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler emphasized the urgent need for humanists to focus on values-based systems and the transformative power of caring economics. Drawing on neuroscience and history, she argues that peace begins at home and calls for a shift in worldview to build more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate societies rooted in connection rather than control. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade—now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). 

In this conversation, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Riane Eisler about childhood as the foundation of social systems and how early experiences shape societies. Eisler contrasts partnership-oriented cultures with domination systems, emphasizing the impact of family violence, authoritarian child-rearing, and rigid gender stereotypes on broader patterns of authoritarianism, war, and inequality. She highlights historical challenges to domination, from feminism to abolitionism, and points to Nordic nations as modern examples of partnership-oriented societies. Eisler underscores the urgency of shifting from punitive traditions to caring, partnership-based models, arguing that true social transformation begins at home—with the treatment of children.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Once more, we are here with the wonderful Riane Eisler. We will be discussing childhood and children within the context of partnership studies. You talk about childhood as a foundation for social systems. What do you mean by that?

Moreover, how is the treatment of children today in, let us say, societies that have the basics covered—advanced industrial economies—compared to hunter-gatherer societies before the agricultural revolution, roughly ten to twelve thousand years ago?

Riane Eisler: Well, it is good to be with you again. I want to say that we have not been taught to think of childhood and family as part of, and a key part of, the kind of life we have and the kind of society we live in. My research shows what neuroscience confirms: that nothing less than the brains of our children—and therefore of our adults—are shaped by what children observe and experience, particularly in their first five years. This does not mean that we cannot change.

We have very flexible brains. However, as those of us who have gone through some form of psychotherapy know, it can be an arduous process. So, in our summit called Peace Begins at Home, we are focusing on childhood—on what children experience and observe. Moreover, of course, most of what children experience and observe takes place within their families. So the summit focuses not only on the widespread violence against children worldwide, but also on how it ripples outward—into social violence, into war, into global conflicts, into the very issues that people who talk about Peace usually highlight. That may include crime, but more often it is war.

And we think that by talking about it, we can change it. However, we cannot, because it is part of the mindset and worldview that children develop early on. The mindset that children form in the context of a domination-oriented culture or subculture normalizes violence. That ties into authoritarianism, too—not just interpersonal violence.

Jacobsen: So when we look at public figures later in life—Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro previously, Viktor Orbán—these kinds of personalities, how would you interpret them within the partnership model of child-rearing and domination systems, in terms of how they were raised? What are the indicators?

Eisler: We know, for example, about Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, and Donald Trump’s childhoods. These were very traumatizing upbringings. Moreover, what they learned about relationships was that there are only two alternatives: you either dominate or you are dominated. Of course, they carried that lesson with them, along with their trauma. If they have any capacity for caring, it is either confined to the in-group or, in some cases, empathy—which is part of humanity’s evolutionary heritage—is severely diminished. We have known this from the work of Alice Miller, for example, who has gone into detail in the biographies of these kinds of men.

However, we need to take a fresh look at this, because according to UNICEF, about two out of three children worldwide—roughly 300 million between the ages of 2 and 4—are subjected to physical punishment or psychological violence by caregivers regularly. That is our legacy from rigid domination systems. We have also seen, especially during the upheavals following the Industrial Revolution over the past three hundred years, movement after movement challenging traditions of domination—whether in politics, economics, or the family. However, we still have not fully connected the dots.

We have not connected the dots between the Enlightenment—the so-called Rights of Man movement, which challenged the supposed divinely ordained right of kings to rule their “subjects”—and what followed in the late 1700s. At the end of that century, Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the earliest writers of modern feminism, again challenged another “divinely ordained” right: the right of men to rule over women and children within the castles of their homes.

The abolitionist movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries likewise challenged the idea of a “superior race” ruling over “inferior ones.” Later, the environmental movement questioned the Biblical injunction of human dominion over nature—over “every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Again, that too was framed as divinely ordained.

However, the Bible also contains partnership teachings, often associated with the more nurturing or “feminine” side—teachings of care, of reciprocity, of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. However, these exist alongside domination-justifying narratives, and a portrayal of a deity that is capricious, vengeful, and punitive. That punitive framework echoes in the family, where violence is rationalized under the notion of raising “God-fearing” children. Not all religions or all forms of religious belief do this, but the strands of partnership teaching are often overlaid with domination thinking.

So we need to disentangle all of this. Moreover, it is urgent, because domination-oriented systems are pushing us toward an evolutionary dead end. Nuclear weapons, climate change—these are challenges that domination systems cannot adequately address. Nor can they cope with the new technologies of communication and transportation that make us all interconnected. We have a massive task before us, and it begins in our homes.

Jacobsen: What methods work at home?

Eisler: Well, as I said before, it is like flying the plane while we are still building it. Many of us have mistaken rebellion—or blaming and shaming our parents and grandparents—for real change. That does not work. What we need is reconstruction.

There are many efforts today to teach children to talk about their feelings, to develop emotional literacy. However, that is very difficult with very young children—before they can even speak, their only outlet is to cry. Still, we are beginning to see an important distinction between authoritative parenting, which does set limits that children need for safety, and authoritarian parenting, which enforces control through fear and force. For example, a child must be pulled back from running into traffic, but that is different from slapping or spanking as a routine practice.

I do not claim to have all the answers. However, I know that we are in a transitional period where many of us realize that the old methods—slapping, spanking, or worse—only reinforce domination mindsets and normalize violence. We are searching for better ways.

Jacobsen: How does child abuse affect the parent as well?

Eisler: Of course, the parent is also affected by child abuse. You are quite right to call it that. Parents carry with them this normalization of violence, often without even recognizing it. That is why it is essential to reach parents. Moreover, this is precisely what our summit, Peace Begins at Home, is all about.

It is a Center for Partnership Studies summit with incredible speakers, including two very prominent voices from the men’s movement. This is important because domination systems are deeply tied to rigid gender stereotypes. They equate difference—beginning with the biological difference between male and female forms—with superiority or inferiority, with dominating or being dominated, with serving or being served. That becomes a template for racism, for antisemitism, and all the other “-isms.” It is all interconnected.

Jacobsen: What about cross-cultural perspectives? Are there particular countries that are doing well in fostering peaceful psyches as opposed to violent psyches?

Eisler: Yes, there are. Ireland, for example, has very recently demonstrated how quickly a culture can move from a domination-oriented system to a more partnership-oriented one. Not coincidentally, they have also done important work addressing violence in families—both emotional and physical violence. I was invited to Ireland to speak at a conference on exactly that subject.

And then there are the Nordic nations, which, though more gradually, have also moved more toward the partnership side. Again, not coincidentally, these nations consistently rank at the very top of international surveys of life satisfaction and happiness. Finland, Norway, and Sweden are usually in the lead because they implement caring policies. Moreover, what we are talking about here is not only what happens in families but also what happens in the justice system.

They practice restorative rather than purely punitive approaches to justice. They recognize that offenders are human beings—often people who were traumatized or raised in domination-oriented families. So instead of focusing only on punishment, they address the roots of the problem.

Jacobsen: What about societies where juvenile detention is extensive, or even countries like Iran, where capital punishment still exists for juveniles?

Eisler: Fundamentalist Iran is a society that orients strongly to the domination system, and in such cultures, violence is normalized. By contrast, the Nordic nations were the first to outlaw corporal punishment of children. Sweden pioneered this in 1979, and other countries followed. This was revolutionary at the time because punitive child-rearing was still considered normal almost everywhere else.

What we are talking about, however, is not just laws but a shift in consciousness. Moreover, this is difficult because we still lack a cultural framework that highlights the difference between partnership and domination systems. So instead, people tend to fall into left versus right, or religious versus secular divides. However, these polarities distract from what truly matters and from what research shows: that cultures—whether partnership- or domination-oriented—rest on four interconnected cornerstones.

The first is childhood and family. The second is gender. Moreover, here, what children observe in their homes is critical. If children see caring consistently devalued—as it often is in domination systems where care is stereotypically coded as “feminine”—they internalize both the normalization of violence and the devaluation of caring. However, if there is one universal human need, it is for a caring connection. Without it, human beings cannot thrive. We know from research on neglected orphans, for example, that without nurturing care, their brains do not fully develop.

It is all there, but in bits and pieces. My research has tried to bring these pieces together using the framework of the partnership–domination social scale.

Jacobsen: Lay out for us two schematics. One: healthy childhood, healthy child. Two: unhealthy childhood, unhealthy child.

Eisler: There is a great deal of research today into how foraging, or gathering-hunting, societies functioned. Moreover, I deliberately say “gathering-hunting” because the majority of calories came from gathering rather than hunting. Archaeological and anthropological evidence also shows that women hunted, even pregnant women, which is fascinating. We are reclaiming so much of our prehistory through archaeology, mythology, and DNA studies.

What we are finding is that the shift from millennia of cultures oriented more toward partnership to domination-oriented systems occurred only about five to ten thousand years ago—a tiny blip in the span of human cultural evolution. That means change is possible, and we are beginning to understand that change must happen now, as domination systems are driving us toward an evolutionary dead end.

You asked about childhood. Well, in many foraging societies still observed today, there is widespread practice of alloparenting—the idea that everyone in the community shares responsibility for all children, rather than an in-group/out-group mindset typical of domination systems. Children grow up with a strong sense of trust and connection. Darcia Narvaez’s work.

I respect her work, though I disagree with her idealization of tribal societies. Not all Indigenous cultures today are partnership-oriented. Some, like the Taliban or fundamentalist Iran, are domination-oriented. Still, Narvaez is right that children raised in cooperative, supportive systems develop healthier senses of self because they learn to trust others.

The question, of course, is how we can achieve this in larger, more complex societies. One way is through parents experimenting with authoritative rather than authoritarian parenting—providing structure and limits without relying on fear or force. Another is through communal living arrangements that revive aspects of alloparenting. These are experiments in partnership, beginning with family and gender.

Because domination systems are not only about man over woman, but also man over man, in such systems, men themselves live under pressure: either being subordinate to more powerful men or struggling to stay on top. That constant tension and fear are traumatizing.

Moreover, this carries into economics. Domination economics devalues care, while partnership economics recognizes its central importance. We need to change our economic systems, as well as our stories and our language. Think of the old myths that blame Eve or Pandora for humanity’s suffering. These narratives frame women as the cause of all ills. We have inherited far too much of this.

Even in religion, for example, the Christian “Holy Family” depicts only the males as divine, while Mary—the mother of God—is the only mortal. That symbolism reinforces dominant thinking. However, we can choose different stories, different frameworks. That is part of the cultural reconstruction we urgently need.

Jacobsen: What about the wholesale abandonment of large swaths of children in domination-oriented societies?

Eisler: It is part of the system. Children in the “out group” often do not count at all. However, even children in the “in-group” are failing, because traditions of physical and emotional violence create trauma across the board. Many young people sense that something is wrong, but we lack a clear cultural frame for understanding it. Meanwhile, those pushing us backward, into regression toward domination, place great emphasis on gender.

In domination systems, gender stereotypes are rigidly enforced. There is little space for those who do not fit them, even though people who are gay, bisexual, or transgender have existed across cultures and throughout history. Denial of reality is built into domination systems.

Moreover, it starts in families. Think about it: children are entirely dependent for survival—food, shelter, life itself—on the very adults who may hurt them. So they cannot acknowledge the violence; they have to accept what they are told by their elders and “betters.” Moreover, much of the time, blame is placed on the out-group, beginning with women. It is a convoluted system, but it is the one we have inherited.

In my book The Chalice and the Blade, I focus heavily on prehistory and gender. The book ends with the idea that we stand at a threshold between evolutionary breakdown and evolutionary breakthrough. That book, now in its 57th or 58th U.S. printing and published in about thirty foreign editions, continues to be rediscovered by new generations. In Sacred Pleasure, I extended the analysis to focus on childhood and touch—whether nurturing, caring touch, or punitive, violent touch.

The culture is beginning to catch up with this research, but still only in bits and pieces.

Jacobsen: What about neuroatypical children?

Eisler: For a long time, neurodivergent children were treated as if they were not intelligent or, worse, as if they did not exist. Thankfully, that is changing. Psychology today—including strong statements by the American Psychological Association against spanking—recognizes that these children are not “less than” but simply different. This is an important step toward breaking the old pattern of equating difference with inferiority.

Moreover, that is the heart of the issue. Domination systems equate difference—beginning with the difference between male and female forms—with superiority or inferiority, domination or subordination, serving or being served.

We are not taught to connect the dots, to think in systems terms. Family and gender are often dismissed as “secondary” issues, but in fact, they are foundational. Instead, we are trained to see the world only through conventional categories—left and right, religious and secular, Western and Eastern, capitalist and socialist. Those categories obscure the deeper dynamics of partnership versus domination, which cut across all of them.

Jacobsen: What do you consider the most regressive point in modern history for children?

Eisler: Oh, there have been many. Look, for example, at what happens to girls in some countries where religious customs enforce isolation during menstruation—a perfectly natural event in every woman’s life. They are treated as though they “pollute” men or even other women. That illustrates how domination systems distort natural processes.

However, this is not a matter of women against men or men against women. Caring is a human capacity. In fact, in my second marriage, I was with a very caring man, David Loye, who deserves great credit for pointing out how Darwin’s work has been misused to justify domination systems. He was one of the first to argue that Darwin’s Descent of Man was not about ruthless competition but emphasized cooperation and empathy as central to human cultural evolution. Others have since made similar claims, but David was ahead of his time in recognizing this.

So yes, we see regressions toward domination. However, at the same time, we also see many trends toward partnership—though again, mainly in bits and pieces, without a unifying framework.

Jacobsen: Riane, thank you very much again for your time.

Eisler: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Jacobsen: Bye-bye.

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