What is a Family?, livre ebook

• Written by a diverse team of international contributors from across the US, Europe and Australia;

• Offers fresh insights into how regulation shapes and is shaped by evolving family life.

Available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

How families are formed, lived and understood has shifted dramatically—yet legal frameworks often still reflect outdated norms. This collection brings together a diverse team of international contributors to explore what a family is through a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including law, psychology, economics, family science and history, inviting transdisciplinary reflections on family regulation.

By examining how legal systems respond to, resist, or incorporate diverse family forms, from non-marital partnerships to trans families, the book reveals the tensions between lived realities and legal recognition. Offering fresh insight into how regulation shapes and is shaped by evolving family life, this book is essential for scholars interested in family law, social policy and the changing dynamics of kinship.

Foreword - Martha Albertson Fineman

1. Introduction – Claire Fenton-Glynn and Alice Margaria

Part 1: Unsettling Traditional Paradigms

2. What Is a Family? A Feminist Family Science Perspective – Katherine R Allen

3. The Legal Family – Alan Brown

4. The Family and Its Disruption by Transgender Families – a Study of the Cases ‘Nigel and Beth’ and ‘Christina and Kimberly’ – Claire Jenkins

Part 2: Developing Regulation of Adult Relationships

5. Marriage and Family Formation at the Intersection of Law and History – Mary Jo Maynes

6. What Is a ‘European Family’? – Jens M Scherpe

7. Why Should the State Recognize Non-Conjugal Unions? An Analysis of the Debate Around Their Legal Recognition – Nausica Palazzo and Daniel Cardoso

Part 3: Empirical Approaches to Defining Families

8. What Is a Family? A Developmental Psychology Perspective – Kate Ellis-Davies and Sarah Foley

9. A Feminist Economist’s Perspective on Marriage Laws – Shoshana Grossbard

10. Family Ideals Across Cultures – Arnstein Aassve, Alícia Adserà, Paul Y. Chang, Letizia Mencarini, Chen Peng, Samuel Plach, James M. Raymo, Senhu Wang, and Wei-Jun Jean Yeung

Part 4: Rethinking the Family of Law

11. The Legal Family as a Child Development Incubator – Noam Peleg

12. From Folkhemmet to Post-Welfare Sweden: Rethinking Care and Dependency in a Neoliberal Context – Helena Moradi

13. Loneliness and Care: Rethinking the Role of Family Law – Jonathan Herring