  Whether families are the primary cause, or a contributing cause along with other social structures and culturally generated expectations, feminists point to the ways that families are part of a system that reproduces women's social and economic inequality. Families cannot be viewed apart from that system or in isolation from it. Nor can they be assumed to be just: too many of them are not. The issue, for feminists, is not whether the state can intervene in the family and reproduction but how, and to what ends.