At different times and in different contexts, each of the key figures of American neoliberalism can be found invoking the idea that the “natural obligations” of family should serve as a substitute for the welfare state, indeed that the “altruism” of the family represents a kind of primitive mutual insurance contract that we would do well to revive today. From here derives the notion, now pervasive in American welfare practice, that the state has the right to identify and enforce legal obligations of marital support and child custody even when the parties concerned do not consent to or recognize this relationship.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 213