  Consider choice based arguments in favor of contractual families. Children do not choose to enter their families; moreover, children are, at least initially, completely dependent on their caretakers. Parents are rightly taken to have an obligation to care for their children that does not rest on children's consent or contract. Furthermore, a choice by parents to participate in a gendered family affects the lives of their children. The free choices of such parents generate unequal opportunities for their children, inequalities that children themselves have not chosen.