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5 Stan. J. C.R. & C.L. 191 (2009)
Introduction: The Dialectic of Privacy and Punishment in the Gendered Regulation of Parenting

handle is hein.journals/stjcrcl5 and id is 195 raw text is: INTRODUCTION THE DIALECTIC OF PRIVACY AND PUNISHMENT IN THE GENDERED REGULATION OF PARENTING Dorothy Robertst PRIVACY AND PUNISHMENT IN A NEOLIBERAL ERA Family law gives parents two alternatives in their relationship with the state: privacy or punishment. Under the ideal of privacy, government agents leave parents alone to raise their children as they wish, with minimal state interference or support. When this approach fails, government agents intervene in the home to punish parents who are unable to care for their children properly. The choice between privacy and punishment has gendered effects. It hurts mothers, who are the primary caregivers for children, the most and helps to reinforce their unequal status in the market and in the home. Feminist scholars have shown that relying on private arrangements for inevitable dependencies gives women the responsibility of caregiving while denying them adequate public support and vilifying those who depart from heterosexist family norms.' Mothers who are unable to rely on a male breadwinner or on their own income to raise their children typically are penalized as a condition of receiving state support.2 The extra devaluation of caregiving by women of t Kirkland & Ellis Professor, Northwestern University School of Law; faculty fellow, Institute for Policy Research. I am grateful to the Kirkland & Ellis Fund for research support. 1. See, e.g., MARTHA ALBERTSON FINEMAN, THE AUTONOMY MYTH: A THEORY OF DEPENDENCY (2005); EvA FEDER KITTAY, LovE's LABOR: ESSAYS ON WOMEN, EQUALITY, AND DEPENDENCY (1999). 2. SeC MARTHA ALBERTSON FINEMAN, THE NEUTERED MOTHER, THE SEXUAL FAMILY, AND OTHER TWENTIETH CENTURY TRAGEDIES (1995); GWENDOLYN MINK, WELFARE'S END (1998). In contrast to the dominant feminist approach that centers on women's equal labor market participation, a growing feminist jurisprudence centers on theorizing care work and advocates greater recognition and support for women's caregiving. See generally Mary Becker, Care and Feminists, 17 Wis. WOMEN'S L.J. 57 (2002); Katharine B. Silbaugh, Forward Structures of Care Work, 76 Cm-KENT. L. REv. 1389 (2001). For an argument in

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