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The welfare state literature has an increasing focus on the gender-neutrality of family policies that relieve dependence on the market. Yet as Orloff (1993) argues, if wives face hurdles to the market that their husbands do not, a gender neutrality focus is premature, because policies that seem to help women actually hinder full market access. For example, Morgan and Zippel (2003) argue that increasingly generous leave policies in Europe mask a desire to keep women out of the workforce. Bambra (2004) creates a gender-neutral de-familiasation index, but this and other analyses of family policy focus on parental leave and childcare. These help mothers and fathers, but none relieves women of the dependence on marriage. A complete analysis of family policy requires a focus on policies outside the traditional welfare state sphere. The paper incorporates dependence on marriage into the analysis of family policies in Canada and the United States through an examination of abortion and domestic violence. These policies either remove or create dependence on marriage and thus allow for a complete picture of equality in modern welfare states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]