Family Law in Turbulent Times

Abstract

Starting in the mid-1960s, there was a demographic upheaval that radically changed family behavior and the meanings of sex and procreation, marriage, gender, parenthood, family relations and life itself. Family law became a testing ground for this new legal and social landscape. Law professor Mary Ann Glendon looks at recent trends in Western family law, including the new concept of marriage and the family, the declining regulation of marriage, the creation of relations of kinship (including the abolishment of illegitimacy and the new reproductive technologies), as well as the marginalization of children. She encourages readers to rethink family policy and suggests that giving special treatment to child-raising households – especially those in which the parents are married – might lead to a better family policy in the future.