"Casebook for law students studying Family Law"--

Family Law in a Changing America is a new casebook that highlights law and family patterns as they are now, not as they were decades ago. By focusing on key changes in family life, the casebook attends to rising equality and inequality within and among families. The law, formally at least, accords more equality and autonomy than ever before, having repudiated hierarchies based on race, gender, and sexuality. Yet, as our society has grown more economically unequal, so too have family patterns diverged—with marriage and marital child-rearing becoming a mark of privilege. A number of developments—mass incarceration, the privatization of care, and reproductive technologies—have also contributed to disparities based on race, class, and gender. The casebook reflects the law’s continuing emphasis on marriage, but also treats nonmarital families as central. Rather than privilege the marital heterosexual family, the casebook organizes the presentation of the law around 1) adult relationships and 2) parent-child relationships. Professors and students will benefit from: Text that includes dramatic changes in family patterns in contemporary society, including: declining marriage rates, with differential rates based on race and class; increasing rates of nonmarital cohabitation and nonmarital parenting; the use of assisted reproduction and its challenge to biological understandings of parentage; tensions between women’s increasing education and employment and the perseverance of the gendered division of labor in families; the inclusion of same-sex couples in marriage and parenthood An approach that decenters the marital heterosexual family and instead is structured around the general topics of adult relationships and parent-child relationships Focus on the scope of family law, including extensive coverage of crucial sites of family regulation, such as the child welfare system, that are traditionally neglected Emphasis on multiple modes of legal interpretation (common law, constitutional, statutory) and multiple actors in the legal system (judges, legislators, lawyers, experts, social workers) Practical problems and exercises, often based on actual cases or events, that illuminate the gaps, tensions, and implications of existing doctrine; some of the problems include postscripts explaining how the issue was resolved by a court or legislature An approach that draws on more recent cases and cutting-edge issues and that includes extensive coverage of assisted reproduction (including IVF, surrogacy, and gamete donation), parentage (including intentional parenthood, functional parenthood, and multi-parent arrangements), adoption, child welfare, and family support

For many years family law was viewed as a study of the regulation of relationships of husband and wife and parent and child. Both relationships were clearly defined. In the case of husband and wife, it was through formal legal procedures or informal arrangements called marriage. In the case of parent and child it was either through biology or adoption. Equally defined were the stages by which these relationships were established, maintained, and terminated. By the close of the twentieth century, basic questions about who should be officially designated a family member and by what procedure were being raised both in the legislature and in litigation. In addition, conventional models that had defined domestic relations such as marriage, divorce, and adoption were either being expanded to include contemporary patterns of living arrangements and the current reality or new models were being constructed. In Family Law in America, Professor Sanford N. Katz examines the present state of family law in America. Themes include the tension between individual autonomy and governmental regulation in all aspects of family law, the extent to which relationships established before marriage are being regulated, and how marriage is being redefined to take into account equality of the sexes. It demonstrates how the definition of marriage as a partnership in which the individual spouse's rights are recognized has resulted in protection of the vulnerable spouse and examines fault and no-fault divorce procedures and the extent to which these procedures reflect social realities. This volume describes state intervention into the parent and child relationship and how this is reflected in the reexamination of the privacy of the family unit. It concludes with a discussion of the conventional model of adoption of children and how additional models are being developed to take into account new family forms.

There's no denying that a woman's relationship with her father is one of the most important in her life. And there's also no getting around how the quality of that relationship—good, bad, or otherwise—profoundly affects daughters in a multitude of ways. In Our Fathers, Ourselves, research psychologist, author and scholar Dr. Peggy Drexler examines the ways in which the father-daughter bond impacts women and offers helpful advice for creating a better, stronger, more rewarding relationship. Through her extensive research and interviews with women, Dr. Drexler paints an intimate, timely portrait of the modern father-daughter relationship. Women today are increasingly looking to their dads for a less-than-traditional bond, but one that still stands the test of time and provides support, respect, and guidance for the lives they lead today. Our Fathers, Ourselves is essential reading for any woman who has ever wondered how she could forge a closer connection with and gain a deeper understanding of her father.

This book offers an up-to-the-moment assessment of the condition of the American family in an era of growing inequality.

Over the last forty years, the number of American households with a stay-at-home parent has dwindled as women have increasingly joined the paid workforce and more women raise children alone. Many policy makers feared these changes would come at the expense of time mothers spend with their children. In Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, sociologists Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, and Melissa Milkie analyze the way families spend their time and uncover surprising new findings about how Americans are balancing the demands of work and family. Using time diary data from surveys of American parents over the last four decades, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life finds that—despite increased workloads outside of the home—mothers today spend at least as much time interacting with their children as mothers did decades ago—and perhaps even more. Unexpectedly, the authors find mothers' time at work has not resulted in an overall decline in sleep or leisure time. Rather, mothers have made time for both work and family by sacrificing time spent doing housework and by increased "multitasking." Changing Rhythms of American Family Life finds that the total workload (in and out of the home) for employed parents is high for both sexes, with employed mothers averaging five hours more per week than employed fathers and almost nineteen hours more per week than homemaker mothers. Comparing average workloads of fathers with all mothers—both those in the paid workforce and homemakers—the authors find that there is gender equality in total workloads, as there has been since 1965. Overall, it appears that Americans have adapted to changing circumstances to ensure that they preserve their family time and provide adequately for their children. Changing Rhythms of American Family Life explodes many of the popular misconceptions about how Americans balance work and family. Though the iconic image of the American mother has changed from a docile homemaker to a frenzied, sleepless working mom, this important new volume demonstrates that the time mothers spend with their families has remained steady throughout the decades.