Routledge Studies in Family Sociology – serie

This volume examines the ways in which bordering practices influence the everyday lives of racialized parents in the changing welfare states of Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Focusing on the need to negotiate, adjust, and reconcile family life, parenthood and parenting practices in the face of national, material, ideological, cultural, religious, and moral borders, it considers the manner in which these processes are complicated by recent changes in the legitimation of Nordic welfare states. The case studies centre on migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker parents, as well as parents of the indigenous Sámi communities. The book considers the ways in which the welfare state and its services construct borders of respectable parenthood, and examines the efforts on the part of racialized parents to negotiate such borders and organize their transnational everyday lives. Uncovering possibilities and obstacles that exist for families seeking to enact citizenship in the Nordic welfare states, Family Life in Transition will appeal to social scientists with interests in the sociology of the family, children, parenting, and the welfare state.

Illustrating the fascinating intersections of online media and new kinship, this book presents a study of the increasing numbers of single women and lesbian couples reproducing by using donor sperm. It explores how they connect with each other online, develop intimate digital communities and, most importantly, locate their children’s hitherto unknown biological half-siblings, throughout the world. The author discusses how these new families - consisting of only mothers - engage in extended families involving large numbers of ‘donor siblings’. The new families challenge previous understandings of kinship, and provide illustrations of how norms of gender, sexuality and family are challenged, negotiated and maintained in contemporary times. A crucial study of contemporary formations of family, gender and race, Mediated Kinship discusses the racial aspects of the world’s largest sperm bank exporting Danish sperm (termed ‘Viking sperm’), and explores the narratives of whiteness and imagined racial superiority that circulate among mothers, as well as the racialisations accompanying commercial online sperm sales. By analysing contemporary families of donor-conceived children in the context of legislation, reproduction technologies and online media, the book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, whiteness, gender, sexuality, kinship and the sociology of the family.

While the ‘spatial turn’ within the social sciences has already nurtured a broad discussion of the relation between society and space, little attention has so far been paid to the question of what we can learn about families when exploring space in its different facets. This book brings together international authors from the fields of sociology, human geography, and anthropology to support the development of space-sensitive and de-territorialised perspectives on the family that reach beyond classical concepts such as the ‘household’ or the ‘nuclear family’. With close attention to the implications of differing relations to space for the social fabric of families, it presents studies of theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects of late-modern family life. Examining the meaning of absence and presence for parenting, the aesthetic, and sensual dimensions of everyday family life, and its digital and media-related features aspects, Family and Space considers the value of a range of approaches to researching the spatial elements of family life, including ethnographic accounts, interviews, group discussions, mobile methods, and network analyses.

The Pacific Islands have some of the highest rates of family violence in the world. Addressing the contemporary mutations of Pacific Island families and the shifting understandings of violence in the context of rapid social change, this book investigates the conflict dynamics generated by these transformations. The contributors draw from detailed case studies in a range of Pacific territories to examine family violence in relation to the social, economic and political situation of native populations as well as individual, collective and institutional responses to the development of violence within and upon the family. They focus on vernacular understandings, conflicting social norms, the emergence of different types of violent patterns, the impact of violence on individuals and communities, and local attempts at mitigating or combating it. Combining ethnographic expertise with engaged scholarship, this volume offers a vivid account of ongoing social change in Pacific Island societies and a crucial contribution to the understanding of family violence as a social process, cultural construct, and political issue. This book will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of violence and the family, Pacific studies, development studies, and the social and cultural anthropology of Oceania.

The Pacific Islands have some of the highest rates of family violence in the world. Addressing the contemporary mutations of Pacific Island families and the shifting understandings of violence in the context of rapid social change, this book investigates the conflict dynamics generated by these transformations. The contributors draw from detailed case studies in a range of Pacific territories to examine family violence in relation to the social, economic and political situation of native populations as well as individual, collective and institutional responses to the development of violence within and upon the family. They focus on vernacular understandings, conflicting social norms, the emergence of different types of violent patterns, the impact of violence on individuals and communities, and local attempts at mitigating or combating it. Combining ethnographic expertise with engaged scholarship, this volume offers a vivid account of ongoing social change in Pacific Island societies and a crucial contribution to the understanding of family violence as a social process, cultural construct, and political issue. This book will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of violence and the family, Pacific studies, development studies, and the social and cultural anthropology of Oceania.

Illustrating the fascinating intersections of online media and new kinship, this book presents a study of the increasing numbers of single women and lesbian couples reproducing by using donor sperm. It explores how they connect with each other online, develop intimate digital communities and, most importantly, locate their children’s hitherto unknown biological half-siblings, throughout the world. The author discusses how these new families - consisting of only mothers - engage in extended families involving large numbers of ‘donor siblings’. The new families challenge previous understandings of kinship, and provide illustrations of how norms of gender, sexuality and family are challenged, negotiated and maintained in contemporary times. A crucial study of contemporary formations of family, gender and race, Mediated Kinship discusses the racial aspects of the world’s largest sperm bank exporting Danish sperm (termed ‘Viking sperm’), and explores the narratives of whiteness and imagined racial superiority that circulate among mothers, as well as the racialisations accompanying commercial online sperm sales. By analysing contemporary families of donor-conceived children in the context of legislation, reproduction technologies and online media, the book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, whiteness, gender, sexuality, kinship and the sociology of the family.

With a focus on nine different national contexts, this book explores contemporary family diversity. With attention to the different welfare states and cultures of care in each setting, it problematizes the pre-eminence of research and policy centered on heteronormative families, showing the extent to which family diversity exists cross-nationally in relation to different gendered and "family-friendly" policies. Considering variations in family forms, including differences in the number and marital status of parents, their gender, sexual orientation and biological relationship to the children (adoption), multicultural families, and families created by technological assistance or surrogacy, it presents demographic information, alongside quantitative and qualitative research, across a number of advanced countries. A contribution to our understanding of the diversity of family forms, how diversity is lived in families, and what family diversity means in various international policy contexts. The Changing Faces of Families will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of the family.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

With a focus on nine different national contexts, this book explores contemporary family diversity. With attention to the different welfare states and cultures of care in each setting, it problematizes the pre-eminence of research and policy centered on heteronormative families, showing the extent to which family diversity exists cross-nationally in relation to different gendered and "family-friendly" policies. Considering variations in family forms, including differences in the number and marital status of parents, their gender, sexual orientation and biological relationship to the children (adoption), multicultural families, and families created by technological assistance or surrogacy, it presents demographic information, alongside quantitative and qualitative research, across a number of advanced countries. A contribution to our understanding of the diversity of family forms, how diversity is lived in families, and what family diversity means in various international policy contexts. The Changing Faces of Families will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of the family.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

This book focuses on issues of family, work, and gender, with a focus on gender inequality. Women are disadvantaged in both paid and domestic work, due in large part to being primarily responsible for duties within the domestic sphere. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities, making the issue of reducing gender inequality even more pressing. Fathers play an important role in contributing to, and perhaps reducing, gender inequality, but barriers to their involvement in family life have received less attention than detailing challenges that mothers face. If men were equally involved in all aspects of domestic life (i.e., were fully engaged dads), women's burdens would be reduced and perceptions of who is responsible for parenting may change, resulting in greater gender equality. Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States focuses on the key issue of father involvement, seeking to understand why fathers are less involved at home than mothers despite an increased desire for fathers to be more engaged parents. This book utilizes recent national survey data, interviews with fathers, and insights from the author’s personal experience as a father to identify current norms of fatherhood within the United States, barriers to father involvement, and strategies to overcome these barriers. Overall, this book argues that by establishing the expectation that fathers will be fully engaged dads as a cultural norm, and by providing structural opportunities for fathers to meet this cultural standard, greater gender equality can be achieved within the United States. The arguments presented in this book are valuable for scholars in the areas of family, work, and gender, policymakers and business leaders who seek to promote gender equality and work-family balance, and parents who are interested in achieving a more egalitarian division of labor within their own families.

This book focuses on issues of family, work, and gender, with a focus on gender inequality. Women are disadvantaged in both paid and domestic work, due in large part to being primarily responsible for duties within the domestic sphere. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these inequalities, making the issue of reducing gender inequality even more pressing. Fathers play an important role in contributing to, and perhaps reducing, gender inequality, but barriers to their involvement in family life have received less attention than detailing challenges that mothers face. If men were equally involved in all aspects of domestic life (i.e., were fully engaged dads), women's burdens would be reduced and perceptions of who is responsible for parenting may change, resulting in greater gender equality. Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States focuses on the key issue of father involvement, seeking to understand why fathers are less involved at home than mothers despite an increased desire for fathers to be more engaged parents. This book utilizes recent national survey data, interviews with fathers, and insights from the author’s personal experience as a father to identify current norms of fatherhood within the United States, barriers to father involvement, and strategies to overcome these barriers. Overall, this book argues that by establishing the expectation that fathers will be fully engaged dads as a cultural norm, and by providing structural opportunities for fathers to meet this cultural standard, greater gender equality can be achieved within the United States. The arguments presented in this book are valuable for scholars in the areas of family, work, and gender, policymakers and business leaders who seek to promote gender equality and work-family balance, and parents who are interested in achieving a more egalitarian division of labor within their own families.

This book explores the transnational aspects of divorce experiences. Transnational Divorce uncovers the stories of four main groups of transnational divorcees at the field site of Singapore, including low-income marriage migrant women from less wealthy countries, low-income citizen men, middle-class living apart together divorced parents and overseas-based citizen divorced mothers. Employing transnational, intersectional feminist perspectives, the book extends the author’s earlier conceptualisation of divorce biography to propose a new framework of transnational divorce biography. The transnational divorce biography framework provides readers a useful analytical tool to make sense of transnational divorced individuals’ messy experiences in working out their transborder intimacy practices. Meandering through their accounts, the author weaves together a strong narrative of inequalities and privileges at the site of intimate life. The book ends with an epilogue on fire dragon feminism where the author discusses place-based feminist mission of activism and resistance.Transnational Divorce will appeal to researchers and policy makers interested in transnational relationships, family studies and sociology in general.

This volume examines the ways in which bordering practices influence the everyday lives of racialized parents in the changing welfare states of Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Focusing on the need to negotiate, adjust, and reconcile family life, parenthood and parenting practices in the face of national, material, ideological, cultural, religious, and moral borders, it considers the manner in which these processes are complicated by recent changes in the legitimation of Nordic welfare states. The case studies centre on migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker parents, as well as parents of the indigenous Sámi communities. The book considers the ways in which the welfare state and its services construct borders of respectable parenthood, and examines the efforts on the part of racialized parents to negotiate such borders and organize their transnational everyday lives. Uncovering possibilities and obstacles that exist for families seeking to enact citizenship in the Nordic welfare states, Family Life in Transition will appeal to social scientists with interests in the sociology of the family, children, parenting, and the welfare state.