Two themes are highlighted: what court personnel did to enforce the cult of domesticity in disorganized families, and how they carried out their work within the confines of an emergent private, technocratic justice system. Overall, socialized legal coercion had contradictory effects relative to social class and gender. It did not constitute a uniform system of patriarchal, capitalist oppression. Rather, poor families, and in particular poor women, were both empowered and oppressed, acted upon and active. Socialization within these domestic relations tribunals was linked to a conception of the court as the public equivalent of the private family, and it was believed that the adversarial process would be counterproductive to the rehabilitation of troubled families. Consequently, family court cases were deemed too personal for public adjudication and due process, but not for State intervention. While men were targeted for intervention, they were reinforced in their position as family breadwinner. Women were empowered vis-a-vis men within the family. By enforcing the cult of domesticity, court personnel reproduced the dependency relation of wife/mother, and successful case resolution often meant wives quit their paid jobs. While much family welfare legislation improved the position of women within the family, it did so at the expense of their equality in the public realm. 5 tables, 13 notes, and 53 references.