The State of Families: Law, Policy, and the Meanings of Relationships collects essential readings on the family to examine the multiple forms of contemporary families, the many issues facing families, the policies that regulate families, and how families—and family life—have become politicized. This text explores various dimensions of "the family" and uses a critical approach to understand the historical, cultural, and political constructions of the family. Each section takes different aspects of the family to highlight the intersection of individual experience, structures of inequality—including race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and immigration—and state power. Readings, both original and reprinted from a wide range of experts in the field, show the multiple forms and meanings of family by delving into topics including the traditional ground of motherhood, childhood, and marriage, while also exploring cutting edge research into fatherhood, reproduction, child-free families, and welfare. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the family, The State of Families offers students in the social sciences and professionals working with families new ways to identify how social structure and institutional practice shape individual experience.

Broad agreement exists among politicians and policymakers that the family is a critical institution of American life. Yet the role that the state should play with respect to family ties among citizens remains deeply contested. This controversy over the state's role undergirds a broad range of public policy debates: Does the state have a responsibility to help resolve conflicts between work and family? Should same-sex marriage be permitted? Should parents who receive welfare benefits be required to work? Yet while these individual policy issues are endlessly debated, the underlying theoretical question of the stance that the state should take with families remains largely unexplored. In The Supportive State, Maxine Eichner argues that government must take an active role in supporting families. She contends that the respect for human dignity at the root of America's liberal democratic understanding of itself requires that the state not only support individual freedom and equality--the goods generally considered as grounds for state action in liberal accounts. It must also support families, because it is through families that the caretaking and human development needs which must be satisfied in any flourishing society are largely met. Families' capacity to satisfy these needs, she demonstrates, is critically affected by the framework of societal institutions in which they function. In the "supportive state" model she develops, the state bears the responsibility for structuring societal institutions to support families in performing their caretaking and human development functions. Although not all family forms will further the important functions that warrant state support, she argues that a broad range will. Eichner's vigorous defense of the state's responsibility to enhance families' capacity for caretaking and human development stands as a sharp rejoinder to the widespread conservative belief that the state's role in family life must be diminished in order for families to flourish.

Examines the intersection of politics and intergenerational family relations in China from the Qing period to 1949.

This title was first published in 2003. This book critically examines the moral and political status of the child by a consideration of three interrelated questions: What rights if any does the child have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child do parents have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child does the state have? David Archard adopts three areas for particular discussion on the practical implications of the general theoretical issues: education, child protection policy, and the medical treatment of children. Providing a clear legal context and a sharper, contemporary discussion of the question of rights, this book presents a clear introduction to the key issues in the moral and political status of children.

How possible is it for the state to steer family values and relationships? How do we assess claims of harm and benefit from state action and inaction? What kind of engagement should we seek between the state and our personal lives? The evidence presented includes state engagements with separating couples, lone parents, retired people, black families, disabled people, pregnant teenagers and young people negotiating adulthood. The range of perspectives, data, and cross-nation-state comparisons, helps readers to come to their own conclusions.

It is easy to find alarming statistics on escalating violence, addiction and economic inequality in developed countries and stubborn poverty in the third world. The fascinating question has to do with cause. New York Times #1 bestselling authors Richard and Linda Eyre’s new book The Turning: Why the State of the Family Matters and What the World Can Do about It contends that the social and economic challenges faced not only in the United States, but throughout the world, are the direct result of an unprecedented and widespread turning away from family. The negative effects of this turning are apparent in the youth of the world today: In São Paulo, Brazil, more than 1.2 million “street children” are addicted to cocaine; Suicide is the third leading cause of death for American fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds; Great Ormond Street Hospital in London has treated girls as young as seven or eight for eating disorders; In Ethiopia, nearly half of the children under the age of six work 30-hour weeks; and In the past year there have been over 64 school shootings in the U.S., equaling more than one shooting a week. The Turning uses research findings, statistics (like those listed above), and the Eyres’ personal experiences at home and abroad to show that families are essential to the survival and success of civilization. With the well-being of the world at risk, The Turning will move readers in a way that will raise personal reflection, discussion, and action to return the family to its necessary position as the recognized and prioritized basic unit of society. But far more than a book of statistics and political suggestions, this is a book for parents—parents who want to better understand the world their children are growing up in and who want to create a family culture that is stronger than the internet culture, the peer culture, and all the other influences that flurry around our children every day. As Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat opened our eyes to the cause-and-effect aspects of the global economy, The Turning will open the eyes of readers across the world to the means-and-ends connections between stable families and households and the world’s ability to meet its social and economic challenges. As Harvard’s Clayton Christensen and best-selling author of The Innovator’s Dilemma states, “This book gives us a common cause, and a clear way to frame and explain the causality of today’s problems.” In the spirit of Friedman’s The World is Flat, Richard and Linda Eyre examine the connections between the world’s mounting social problems and the breakdown of families and look deeply at the root causes of family disintegration—the false paradigms that confuse the priorities of parents and influence the kind of policies and practices in larger institutions (from media to government) that threaten families both economically and emotionally.