The series Buffy the Vampire Slayer is developing new ways to view the family outside the constructs of patriarchal understanding. The paper will explore vampiric relations, the maternal instincts of Giles, and Dawn’s conception and maturation to illustrate how the marking and disruption of bodies comments and constructs family. Through the erasure of the physical mother and father, the series promotes feminist assertions of parenting and family.

First, Buffy the Vampire Slayer contentiously demonizes the patriarchal family unit. No character is allowed a strong parental relationship. Joyce’s character is drawn to protect her daughter in episodes such as "School Hard" (2003), where she physically saves her daughter from Spike’s desires to kill another slayer and "Dead Man’s Party" (3002), when she appeals Principal Snyder’s decision to expel Buffy from high school. However, Joyce’s effort at establishing a strong mother/daughter relationship is denied by their misunderstandings of the patriarchal family unit.

The depiction of the patriarchal family does not stop with The Scooby Gang and carries over into the vampire community as well. First, we know that all vampires can trace their existence back to the Master vampire, the big bad of the first season. The Master and Darla repeatedly refer to the vampire community as "family" ("Welcome to the Hellmouth," 1001). Given that it one must drink the blood of another vampire to become one, directly makes the vampires blood relations.

The series beings to play with the unconventional family by complicating and ultimately creating a new gender; Giles becomes the ultimate parental figure in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Giles cannot be seen as father or mother because he transcends gender barriers and becomes a positive, feminist, parental role model. The program does this by the construction and complication of Giles’ gender and sexual identity. Rather than leave Giles genderless or gender him female or male, the creators of the series write him in such a way that he is gendered but does not belong to either category.

Since the beginning of Season Five, Buffy has been a mother to both Dawn and the ailing Joyce. This has allowed Buffy the Vampire Slayer to go in two directions: showing how to build a feminist family and how to be an empowering mother. After Buffy dies in "The Gift" (5022), Tara and Willow move into the Summers’ residence and care for Dawn the entire summer ("After Life," 6002). Although, prior to the final season, Dawn is far from the well-balanced teenagers such feminist families strive to create, she is happy with her familial situation. This is illustrated in "Bargaining" (6001), when Dawn explains that they have not told their father of Buffy’s death because they feared he would remove Dawn from Willow and Tara’s care.