Another way to explain the incoherence is through the gender subordination it tacitly presumes: the individual freedom iterated by neoliberals is not compromised by or in the family because it pertains only to those who freely come and go from them into the domain of market freedom, not those who perform unwaged work or activity within them. The story being told, in other words, is not from the perspective of families as ensembles of generic individuals, but from a social positioning long associated with male heads of households. The stumble, then, occurs precisely because this perspective is disavowed, even as it is assumed.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 199