ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by surveying the laws that apply to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of families constructed through marriage. It explains women's attempts to reconcile their role within families with their expanding role in the public sphere. Family policy and issues of reproduction and fertility pose the greatest challenges to feminists when choosing a path toward equality. Fertility, reproduction, and issues of population growth or limits even more directly target women and are rarely gender neutral. When policy is crafted to be gender neutral, it rarely benefits women in their pursuit of equality. A legal equality doctrine is difficult to adopt in family and fertility policies because many cases women's biological differences are paramount and are magnified by socially constructed gender roles. Marriage equality was achieved through federal and state actions, but there are several issues left to resolve before same-sex couples enjoy all of the privileges marriage bestows on opposite-sex unions.
