Demonstrating how the law and statutory guidance applies in practice, this book is a critical account of current family justice policy and practice. It draws on recent legislation, case law and research findings to provide clear, accessible information and advice on how to make the difficult decisions in pre-proceedings child care practice work. With reference to child protection legislation and practice frameworks, this book highlights the importance of undertaking informed and effective assessments based on the best outcome for the child. The book acknowledges the constraints facing practitioners, such as working under considerable pressure within tight time frames and focuses on the issues which commonly present as challenges for practice, such as neglect, child sexual exploitation and pre-birth assessments. This is essential reading for students and practitioners in social work and law, as well as policy-makers and other professionals concerned with the current state of child welfare.
This popular family law casebook engages students by presenting core family law doctrine while exploring significant transformations in American families and cutting-edge policy debates. It highlights the important role of constitutional law--and other areas of state and federal law--in shaping family law. The book invites students to consider questions of family definition and governmental regulation of families in light of family law's purposes. It charts family law's evolving approach to adult-adult and parent-child (and other caretaker-dependent) relationships, emphasizing that contemporary families take a variety of forms. The Sixth Edition updates all chapters to reflect the latest family law developments, such as the legal treatment of nonmarital families (including plural relationships) and nonbiological parenting as well as recent Supreme Court decisions. It integrates material previously covered in separate chapters on ethical issues in family law practice and jurisdiction into the contexts in which they arise, such as divorce, child custody, and division of marital property. The Sixth Edition has new material highlighting the intersection of family law with race, gender, class, immigration, sexual orientation, and gender identity. As with previous editions, the casebook contains ample problems for students to apply doctrine to realistic factual contexts and highlights practical dynamics of family law practice. The 6th edition: Thoroughly examines the impact of recent Supreme Court cases on family law, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (and provides teachers with shorter and longer versions of that case), and Golan v. Saada Includes attention to the role of race and racism in laws that shape and regulate the family, with case law addressing marriage, divorce, and inheritance rights of formerly enslaved persons and a post-Loving v. Virginia case challenging the continued requirement that couples disclose race on a marriage license Provides a restructured chapter on the legal consequences of marriage, spousal roles within marriage, and the gender revolution within family law and related fields Includes new developments on marriage requirements, including state minimum age laws and common-law marriage rules, and addresses First Amendment challenges, post-Masterpiece Cakeshop, to civil marriage equality and state antidiscrimination laws Includes new coverage of the intersection of immigration and family law Addresses changes in legal approaches to nonmarital families, including multi-adult domestic partnerships and the Uniform Cohabitants' Economic Remedies Act Provides updated treatment of custody and parenting time issues, including parenting gender-expansive children Provides a restructured chapter on intimate partner violence (IPV), including updates on various factors impacting IPV and shifting gun control statutes and caselaw affecting civil protection orders Provides new consideration of child support issues, including joint custody and subsequent families Provides revised problems in anticipation of the NextGen Bar Exam
This collection, based on papers from the 4th International Family Violence Research Conference, call for a collaborative approach to the study of family violence and examine theory, methodology, assessment, interventions and ethical concerns related to both child and wife abuse.
This volume tackles key issues in the changing nature of family life from a global perspective, and is essential reading for those studying and working with families. Covers changes in couple relationships and the challenges these pose; parenting practices and their implications for child development; key contemporary global issues, such as migration, poverty, and the internet, and their impact on the family; and the role of the state in supporting family relationships Includes a stellar cast of international contributors such as Paul Amato and John Coleman, and contributions from leading experts based in North Africa, Japan, Australia and New Zealand Discusses topics such as cohabitation, divorce, single-parent households, same-sex partnerships, fertility, and domestic violence Links research and practice and provides policy recommendations at the end of each chapter
The aim of this book is to explore what response the law has or should have to different family practices arising from cultural and religious beliefs. The issue has become increasingly debated as western countries have become more culturally diverse. Although discussion has frequently focused on the role Islamic family law should have in these countries, this book seeks to set that discussion within a wider context that includes consideration both of theoretical issues and also of empirical data about the interaction between specific family practices and state law in a variety of jurisdictions ranging from England and Wales to Bangladesh, Botswana, Spain, Poland, France, Israel, Iran and South Africa. The contributors to the 17 chapters approach the subject matter from a variety of perspectives, illustrating its complex and often sensitive nature. The book does not set out to propose any single definitive strategy that should be adopted, but provides material on which researchers, advocates and policy makers can draw in furthering their understanding of and seeking solutions to the problems raised by this significant social development.
Extraordinary changes in patterns of family life—and family law—have dramatically altered the boundaries of parenthood and opened up numerous questions and debates. What is parenthood and why does it matter? How should society define, regulate, and support it? Is parenthood separable from marriage—or couplehood—when society seeks to foster children’s well-being? What is the better model of parenthood from the perspective of child outcomes? Intense disagreements over the definition and future of marriage often rest upon conflicting convictions about parenthood. What Is Parenthood? asks bold and direct questions about parenthood in contemporary society, and it brings together a stellar interdisciplinary group of scholars with widely varying perspectives to investigate them. Editors Linda C. McClain and Daniel Cere facilitate a dynamic conversation between scholars from several disciplines about competing models of parenthood and a sweeping array of topics, including single parenthood, adoption, donor-created families, gay and lesbian parents, transnational parenthood, parentchild attachment, and gender difference and parenthood.
"I find the book extremely attractive. The dialectical perspective provides a consistent avenue from which to address the diversity (structural, cultural, developmental, and functional) in Contemporary American Families. Whereas this perspective does not claim to solve the tensions in families, it offers marvelous insights into the nature and changing diversities in families. I believe this text is particularly well suited for reasonable discussion of serious issues and provides valuable insights into the nature of families and their functioning." --Vince Bloom, California State University, Fresno "Teresa Chandler Sabourin invites students to appreciate the mystery, complexity, and diversity of the contemporary American family. Resisting simplistic descriptions and normative descriptions, Sabourin challenges us to open our minds and hearts to the rich, humane variety of family connections as we search for ways to accommodate the competing demands and conflicting pressures experienced in our most cherished relationships. Starting from the source of her own experience, Sabourin addresses both the darker, abusive side of family relationships, as well as the lighter, spiritual side of intimacy and love. The Contemporary American Family successfully addresses the need for an accessible and teachable treatment of the dialectical perspective on close relationships. This is a book that will encourage students of family communication to respect diversity, question taken-for-granted assumptions, and share the pain and joy and of their own family experiences." --Art Bochner, University of South Florida Increasingly diverse in structure and culture, contemporary families defy explanation by many traditional, linear methods. In order to understand the enormous impact that diversity has on the behaviors and relationships within the family, scholars and students need a means to embrace, rather than solve, relational contradictions. The Contemporary American Family: A Dialectical Perspective on Communication and Relationships recognizes that families are both close and distant, stable and changing, amenable and uncontrollable. Teresa Chandler Sabourin employs a dialectical approach, acknowledging that a family′s contradictions and relational tensions may be the determining factor in its interaction. Writing in a direct and simple style, Sabourin uses this innovative theoretical position to address four types of family diversity: structural, cultural, developmental, and functional. Sure to stimulate discussion and further research, this provocative volume examines The dialectic process in the context of family communication and relationships The redefined, more inclusive American family Contemporary family structures Cultural diversity in the family Issues such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and divorce Spirituality within the family Designed as a supplemental text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in Family Communication, The Contemporary American Family is also an invaluable resource for students in Family Studies and Women′s Studies courses.
Family Life, Family Law, and Family Justice: Tying the Knot combines history, social science, and legal analysis to chart the evolution and interdependence of family life and family law, portray current trends in family life, explain the pressing policy challenges these trends have produced, and analyze the changes in family law that are essential to meeting these challenges. The challenges are large and pressing. Across the industrialized West, nonmarital birth, relational stress, multi-partner fertility, and relationship dissolution have increased, producing a dramatic rise in single parenthood, poverty, and childhood risk. This concentration of familial and economic risk accelerates socioeconomic inequality and retards intergenerational mobility. Although the divide is most pronounced in the United States, the same patterns now affect families throughout the Western world. Across the European Union, there are 9.2 million "lone" parents, and just under half of their families live in poverty. Tying the Knot demonstrates how today’s family patterns are deeply rooted in long-standing, class-based differences in family life and explains why these class-based differences have accelerated. It explains how the values that guide family law development inevitably reflect the world in which families live and develops a new family law capable of meeting the needs of twenty-first century families. The book will be of considerable interest to family specialists from a number of fields, including law, demography, economics, history, political science, public health, social policy, and sociology.
The modern emergence of mediation in the West in the 1980s represents a profound transformation of civil disputing practice, particularly in the field of family justice. In the field of family disputes mediation has emerged to fill a gap which none of the existing services, lawyers and courts on the one hand, or welfare, advisory or therapeutic interventions on the other, could in their nature have filled. In the UK mediation is now the approved pathway in the current landscape of family dispute resolution processes, officially endorsed and publicly funded by government to provide separating and divorcing families with the opportunity to resolve their disputes co-operatively with less acrimony, delay and cost than the traditional competitive litigation and court process. The consolidation of the professional practice of family mediation reflects its progress and creativity in respect both of the expanding focus on professional quality assurance as well as on developments of policy, practice guidelines and training to address central concerns about the role of children in mediation, screening for domestic abuse, sexual orientation and gender identity as well as cross-cultural issues including the role of interpreters in the process. Other areas of innovation include the application of family mediation to a growing range of family conflict situations involving, for example, international family disputes (including cross border, relocation and child abduction issues). Written by leaders in family mediation, this title provides a contemporary account of current practice developments and research concerning family mediation across a range of issues in the UK and Ireland.
