Debating the Legal and Social Meaning of “Family”
Family Law in Turbulent Times

Mary Ann Glendon, law professor at Harvard University, considers the revolution in family law policies over the past 40 years. She argues for a more balanced approach that gives as much consideration to the long-term social consequences as it does to individual rights. In 2003, Glendon was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by the University of Navarra.

Executive Summary
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.

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