The family is a powerful vehicle of transmitting inequality inter-generationally (for instance, via bequests but also via everyday interactions between parents and children). In particular, it disrupts the fair equality of opportunity, which requires that individuals with the same level of inborn talent and ambition have equal access to positions of authority, responsibility and economic advantage. Yet, according to recent arguments, the family is more important than fair equality of opportunity. This means that it is justified to compromise fair equality of opportunity to the extent to which this is necessary for the existence of the unique relationship goods afforded by the family. But those forms of parental partiality which are unnecessary for a flourishing family life and which disrupt fair equality of opportunity (such as bequests) are unjustified. Against this claim I argue that, in societies lacking a social safety net and in very unequal societies, parents are morally permitted to do for their children more than they would be morally permitted to do in a just society. The reason is that in unjust circumstances we should not give much weight to the principle of fair equality of opportunity.