The state-family analogy fails in a number of ways, however. State power is permanent and bureaucratic while parental power—that is, “paternal” power—is temporary and personal.

In states, the corporate power of the state endures indefinitely over all subjects regardless of the age or economic capabilities of the subject. Becoming an adult or earning a living does not free any man from his obligation to pay taxes, submit to conscription, or otherwise obey all state laws. In contrast, in a family, it is considered the norm that a child is subject to parental power only temporarily.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-family-not-model-state

Mises Wire • Ryan McMaken

For centuries, advocates for greater state power have claimed that modern sovereign states are like families.

The value of the strategy is clear: most people view families as both necessary and natural. Even in our current age of widespread divorce and single parents, the idea of “family” (variously defined) remains enduringly popular. Thus, for a politician looking to increase the perceived legitimacy of the state, it only makes sense to attempt to show that the family is analogous to the state—that the state is a type of family writ large.

This comparison may seem, to some, as plausible on the surface. But any serious look at the methods used to govern families reveal that the two institutions are thoroughly dissimilar.

Because the family has long been regarded as both natural and popular, however, state builders have been unable to resist trying to use the family to build their political and ideological agendas.

This goes back to some of earliest theorists of the sovereign state and absolutism, such as Jean Bodin who described the family as the “true image of a Commonweal.” The absolutist king James I of England declared in 1609 that “Kings are compared to fathers in families: for a king is truly parens patriae, the politic father of his people.”

Thomas Hobbes, who differed with Bodin on the state’s ideal form, nonetheless employed a similar strategy of invoking the ancient and fundamental character of the family as a model of authoritarian state power. According to Hobbes: “the beginning of all dominion amongst men was in families. In which, first, the father of the family by the law of nature was absolute lord of his wife and children.”

Moreover, in Hobbes’s imagined state of nature, families are governed primarily by violence and fear. Fathers exercise “absolute power” to mete out life or death to their children. For Hobbes, it is the child’s fear of execution at the hands of his father that maintains order. In this view, the family is thus formed by a form of “conquest” over the children, and Hobbes declares the family to be “a little Monarchy.”

Later French defenders of the absolutist state argued along similar lines. In his attempt to show that monarchs are inviolable, Louis de Bonald began with the argument that divorce within families is intolerable. Then, in turn, he applied the same principles to the monarch, a type of “father” from whom the population can never be divorced.

Thus, we see how pro-state theorists can exploit the idea of family in two ways. The first is to free-ride on the assumed historical legitimacy and beneficence of the state. After all, if the family is accepted as good for society, we must then conclude that the state—which is just a big family, you see—is also good for society.

The second way these theorists exploit the family is by creating a caricature of the family that reflects the form and function of the state itself. That is, when men like Hobbes and Bodin invoke the family ideal, they invoke a dubious version of the family that is rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian. In this imagined family, the father’s role is to issue orders, and everyone else’s role is to meekly obey. Naturally, one can see how this simplistic image of the family is attractive to those who seek to promote more power for a monopolistic state.

Modern Sentimental Appeals to a National “Family”

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