This one's a two-parter, because as far as I can tell, there are two hierarchies in the standard Western family. The most obvious is of course parents over children; the other is the rule of one spouse over the other (traditionally a husband ruling over his wife.) Since this blog is supposed to be about feminist issues, I'll go ahead and start with the latter.

I guess I should back up and explain my motivation to even talk about hierarchy...
I consider myself an individual- this is part of the reason why I'm hesitant to use labels such as "feminist" which in a way give people permission to make all kinds of assumptions about what you believe without you ever having to bother with actually discussing your beliefs. As an individual, I believe in individual liberties. I'm a bit politically obsessed, so I'll get into that later, but for now I'll just say that in my discussions with other people who support such individual liberty, I've come across a lot of anarchists... When pointing people to this here blog, I was quickly asked how I felt about the anarchist views of some feminists regarding the structure of families. My answer basically amounted to "I don't know."

Well that's only kind of true...As far as the hierarchy of one spouse over the other, I do know where I stand. As I said in my opening post, I support equality for women and I without a doubt support equality in marriage. But what this topic really brings me to is some great advice from my dad (which in turn came from his Father-in-Law.) When my parents were getting married, he gave my parents two pieces of advice. First of all, he told them to decide who will be the final decision maker when, despite all efforts, neither party is willing to compromise and a decision can't possibly be reached. The implications for the familial hierarchy in this case is obvious, and maybe I'm just too young and unexperienced, because neither my fiance nor I have been able to concoct any situation that would actually effect both of us equally and substantially where, because we couldn't compromise, one of us would be willing to give up our right to have a say. The other advice though I found quite valuable and I'll get to it in just a minute.

How can two people who are both individuals, bringing different things to the table, be equal partners? My fiance right now is at a seminar to be a teaching assistant so that I can afford to sit here at home talking to strangers on the internet. But then I try to keep our laundry and dishes clean and I do most of the meal planning and preparation. With the going rate of a live-in housekeeper/chef I'm not sure he's getting the short end of the stick!
I've lived with roommates before, and even in that case it's exceptionally rare for each person to contribute equally to household chores, and even if they succeed at that, it's nearly impossible that no one will get mad thinking they're being taken advantage of. And with roommates you've just got chores- not (usually) dinners, unequal monetary contributions, and of course sex. I can't even imagine what counts as equality in sex, especially since I consider backrubs to be acceptable payment for a sexual debt.

When it comes to household chores, that's where we come back to my grandaddy's advice... The other thing he told them is that no matter what, never expect your partner to do more than 10% of the household work; always anticipate your contributions to be at or greater than 90%. I think anyone out there trying to make it work in an equal partnership should really take this to heart. Think back to when you had roommates. At least from my own experience, even when my roommate was contributing a fair share (or moreso, since I tend to be a deadbeat and hate living with people who aren't family) it never seemed like they did better than 20% of the work and I was always frustrated and angry with them. It always feels like you're doing more work than you are, and you'll never notice most of the work that someone else does when you're not around. If you expect 50% and you get it, you'll think you're getting screwed because you'll only notice 20%, but if you expect 10%, that 20% will be a treat! OK so I know that's a lot of numbers, but in my defense, I am an engineer, so please just be thankful that I didn't go into fractions of a fraction.
My only point is that the only way to be happy with a truly equal partnership- hell the only way to even have an equal partnership- is for both of you to expect to do most of the work.
And well...as for sex....
I would say the same rule applies.