548 Pages
by
Routledge
This volume highlights important classic and contemporary works by law and society scholars who analyze the complex and often highly political relationship between law and families. Featuring authors from Australia, Canada, England and the United States, the volume looks at how socio-legal scholars think about families and the law, how law shapes family practices, the capacity of family law to deliver social justice and how family disputes are resolved. Topics such as law's role in recognizing spousal and parental relationships or promoting responsible behaviour or equality norms are covered and the relationship between law's assumptions and the lived realities of families is problematized.
Contents: Series preface; Introduction. Part I Thinking About Families and Law: The myth of state intervention in the family, Frances E. Olsen; Beyond the public/private division: law, power and the family, Nikolas Rose; Race matters: change, choice and family law at the millennium, Twila L. Perry; Family inside/out, Brenda Cossman. Part II Shaping Family Practices: Marriage and the moral bases of personal relationships, John Eeklaar and Mavis Maclean; Money and marriage: sexually transmitted debt in England, Belinda Fehlberg; The legal and moral ordering of child custody, Carol Smart; 'Waiting till father gets home': the reconstruction of fatherhood in family law, Richard Collier; 'Real' mothers for abandoned children, Katherine O'Donovan. Part III Delivering Social Justice: Financial aspects of the divorce transition in Australia: recent empirical findings, Grania Sheehan; Child support or support of children? Re-thinking 'public' and 'private' in family law, Mary Jane Mossman; Child welfare law, 'best interests of the child' ideology, and First Nations, Marlee Kline; Just family law: a basic human right of all Indian women, Archana Parashar. Part IV Resolving Family Disputes: Resolving the dilemma of difference: a critique of 'the role of private ordering in family law', Marcia Neave; Narratives of divorce, Shelley Day Sclater; Dominant discourse, professional language, and legal change in child custody decision making, Martha Fineman; Neither justice nor protection: women's experiences of post-separation violence, Cathy Humphreys and Ravi K. Thiara; Incomplete citizens: changing images of post-separation children, Felicity Kaganas and Alison Diduck; Name index.
Biography
Helen Rhoades
