What does privatization mean in the context of domains that have long been considered quintessentially private? Family, marriage, sexuality: each of these spheres of intimate life has been cast as private. Feminist and sexuality scholars have sought to reveal the artificiality of the public/private distinction and the many ways that intimate life is deeply political. Family, marriage and sexuality are spheres of life constituted through cultural, political and legal discourses. Each is deeply implicated in governance, past and present. Yet, the ideology of the private is enduring, and the idea of privatizing the private tautological. Indeed, the intimate sphere of family and sexuality has not featured prominently in the privatization literature, which has tended to focus on reconfiguring the relationship between the market and the state.