  When we think of children, we must also think of how they are produced. Some feminists see women's subordination as fundamentally caused by their role in reproduction: on this view, only test tube babies will make possible women's equality (Firestone 1970). But this seems like an overstatement: it is not the biology of child production that makes women subordinate but its sociology and economics. Surely, adoptive mothers are as vulnerable to inegalitarian workplace structures of gender hierarchy as biological ones. Nonetheless, bearing a child can have dramatic and negative consequences for women when it occurs in a context of little social support and rigid job structures. Researchers have increasingly documented a “motherhood penalty”: women who raise children fall behind their unmarried counterparts in salary and position. The U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act was a partial step in the right direction of compensating parenthood, granting twelve weeks of unpaid leave for a new parent with all benefits and the right to return to the same or a comparable job. But it is difficult to enforce, and work culture makes it hard for those entitled to exercise their right. Men, in particular are unlikely to take time off following the birth of a child.