We’ve all heard it — from history teachers celebrating America’s Founding Fathers to wartime movies invoking the Nazi “Fatherland” to politicians on the evening news pledging to defend “family values.”

Across cultures and centuries, leaders have turned to family as a powerful and enduring political metaphor. From the earliest monarchies to today’s polarized political landscape, the language of kinship remains very much alive. We can trace it across cultures from “Mother Russia” to the affectionate nickname “Tonton” (uncle) given to France’s former president François Mitterrand to the widely used honorific “Baba” (father), used to address respected leaders in parts of the Middle East and Africa.

What makes this metaphor so potent and enduring, says Robert Shrum, director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, is not just its familiarity but its flexibility. “Using family as metaphor in political rhetoric can have many different layers of meaning,” says Shrum, Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics and professor of the practice of political science. “It can be malevolent and exclusionary, or inspiring and inclusive.”

He offers two stark examples. “Think about the Nazis and the phrase ‘Fatherland,’ which argued that to be a true German, you had to be ‘of the blood and the soil.’ Then, in contrast, recall Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s Day of Affirmation speech in South Africa: ‘Those who live with us are our brothers. … They seek, as we do, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness.’”

The idea that Kennedy expresses here “is a very inclusive one that sees the family as the family of humankind” Shrum says.

When Kinship Serves Power

Democracies and autocracies alike draw on the language of family — but for very different ends.

Authoritarians such as Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un frame family as a way to sanctify nationalism, casting their nations as sacred bloodlines that must be defended at all costs and employing family-based rhetoric as a tool to exclude and to justify aggression. Democracies, in contrast, often invoke Founding Fathers or even Founding Mothers to honor shared creation and collective belonging.

From America’s earliest days, family metaphors that intertwine God and country have been central to political rhetoric — especially on the conservative right — legitimizing authority and appealing to emotional unity.

“The term ‘Mother Russia,’” Shrum notes, “is a call to Imperial Russia — an invitation to see the nation as sacred in and of itself, justified in doing whatever it wants for its own glory, including the belief that Ukraine must belong to it.”

Invoking family in politics has long served to forge identity, justify power and mobilize citizens — for better or worse. “It can be deployed to advance our best ideals,” Shrum adds, “or to appeal to the darker impulses of the human spirit.”

An Enduring Metaphor

Why is the language of family such a persistent and powerful force across political divides? Because it works.

“Family is our most intimate and emotional bond,” says Steve Ross, Dean’s Professor of History. “It implies trust, loyalty and identity.”

Shrum agrees, arguing that its universal relevance and resonance give the metaphor exceptional power. “Family is central to everyone’s life,” he says. “People think not just with their heads but with their hearts. Even if someone never marries or has children, they were still born into a family. It’s no surprise that the theme appears so often in political rhetoric.”

… a family metaphor can either enrich and lift our vision or pollute and sour our view of the world.

When Kinship Becomes Dangerous

The same language that binds can also divide. Family metaphors become perilous when they draw lines between who belongs — and who doesn’t.

Shrum describes the fact that family metaphors in political rhetoric are often used as exclusionary or “othering” tactics as “a misuse of the metaphor” — one that persists through history.

“It’s happening today with Putin. It went on 80 years ago with the Nazis,” he says. “And it’s a choice, not an inevitability. Like all language, a family metaphor can either enrich and lift our vision or pollute and sour our view of the world.”

Such rhetoric also naturalizes political authority, making power seem inherited rather than earned. Some of these tropes are very old — Mother Russia, the Fatherland — so politicians turn to them instinctively, Shrum notes.

“Political leaders have often been cast as father figures — protective yet disciplinary, channeling hierarchies of obedience, duty and dependence,” says Ross, Distinguished Professor of History and author of Hitler in Los Angeles. “Many still frame themselves as parental figures, while their citizens are cast as obedient children.”

Still, the same imagery can express a radically different ideal. “In other cases,” Shrum says, “family metaphors echo the parable of the Good Samaritan — that all of us are brothers and sisters, bound by an obligation to one another. That’s a call to our best selves.”

“There’s a huge difference,” he adds, “between believing America is an idea that welcomes anyone who shares its values, and insisting it is primarily — or even exclusively — simply a place and that it belongs only to those born here.”

Expanding the Circle

Shrum points to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Presidents John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama as leaders who spoke of the human family, not just the American one. But, he adds, inclusive rhetoric isn’t confined to the political left.

“Ronald Reagan gave a terrific speech at the end of his presidency about immigrants enriching America,” Shrum recalls, “echoing the idea long voiced by JFK, George McGovern and others that America is an idea, not just a place.”

He also cites George W. Bush’s PEPFAR initiative, that saved millions of lives in Africa by providing medicine to fight AIDS, as another act of global kinship.

“The real question,” Shrum says, “is how broadly we draw the circle. Are we talking about the human family or just my family? White American families or all American families? It all comes down to how people choose to define what family means.”

Family values, he adds, can be used to exclude those deemed “illegitimate” or to promote empathy and respect for difference.

“I wouldn’t discourage a political candidate from using family metaphors just because they’re often associated with the right,” says Shrum, a veteran Democratic consultant. “That language should never be conceded. All politicians try to reach people’s emotions, not just their brains.”

The Family We Choose

Used wisely, family rhetoric can be a powerful call to empathy and to a kind of caring that reaches beyond the garden gate. “I think of Martin Luther King Jr.’s words,” Shrum says. “The beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”

But he also laments how cynicism often dulls that moral language. “People are now very skeptical of politicians,” he says. “In my experience, some leaders genuinely use family rhetoric because they really do want to build a more perfect union, a better democracy, a better society. We shouldn’t be wary of that — we should wish for more of it.”

In the end, the family metaphor endures because it speaks to both our frailty and our hope. When used with care, it reminds us that belonging isn’t something we’re born into, it’s a choice we make and a bond we build together — one ideally forged in empathy and compassion.