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"A collection that will interest and assist psychologists who work with the wide range of children included in this book. I learned a good deal in my reading of these articles and find it easy to recommend the book to any psychologist whose clinical practice, research, or teaching includes consideration of parent-child relationships, adoption, foster care, child custody, and the significance of family for individual development and social cohesion. . . . Wide-ranging and provocative in its approach to the issue addressed."--"The American Psychological Association"

"The essays encompass the main controversies in the field, placing them in their historical and social contexts. The book will be very useful for courses focusing on this issue, and will serve researchers in welfare history, public policy, legal history, family history, and history of childhood."--"CHOICE"

"A strong argument."--"The law and Politics Book Review"

"Cahn and Hollinger have covered diverse topics - from foster care, to attachment, to racial and ethnic identity in transracial adoption, to legal issues in gay and lesbian adoptions."--"Adoptive Families"

Since the mid-19th century, American law has recognized adoption as a way to create parent-child relationships. As the product of law, rather than blood, adoptive families have become a focal point for debates about the meaning of family, the rights and responsibilities of parents, and the best interests of children.

Families by Law brings together diverse perspectives on contemporary aspects of adoption law and practice. Following a historical overview of adoption in American law and society, the reader presents different responses to concerns about who may place children for adoption, the status of birth parents, who may adopt, and the legal and psychosocial consequences of adoption. The new frontiers of adoption are explored: from transracial and intercountry adoption, adoption by same sex couples, and the adoption of children with special needs, to the movements for opening records and maintaining post-adoption contact between adoptive and birth families. The relationship between adoption and assisted reproductive technologies is discussed, as are feminist, economic, and philosophical perspectives on adoption and procreation. The volume includes statutes and cases, advocacy organization statements, and pieces from legal scholars, social scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists in order to provide a wealth of information about the contemporary dimensions of adoption.

Families by Law provides undergraduates, as well as law, social welfare, and public policy graduate students and others interested in family relationships with a multifaceted context for understanding the complexities of contemporary family life.

This popular family law casebook engages students with the significant changes to the American family and the corresponding evolution of family law doctrine and policy. In the fifth edition, all 17 chapters are fully updated to reflect the latest family law developments, including ones that have occurred since Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). The book emphasizes that contemporary families take a variety of forms, including marital and nonmarital adult relationships, and that constitutional considerations play an increasingly important role in family law. The fifth edition preserves and builds on the approach of the earlier editions: presenting core substantive family law doctrine while also exploring ongoing and emerging policy debates and discussing the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations with experts in fields such as psychology and accounting. A limited number of new cases replace older ones in most chapters, and the introductions to and notes and questions following each lead case, statute, or article have been thoroughly updated. In addition, problems for discussion in each chapter-including new and updated problems for this edition-enable students to apply doctrine in real-life settings that lawyers face. Contemporary Family Law also introduces the myriad issues central to family law practice and to a lawyer's ethical and professional responsibilities. The book includes material on shifting paradigms in family law practice and the roles of family lawyers, and devotes separate chapters to professional ethics, alternative dispute resolution, and private ordering. The book addresses jurisdictional issues in one integrated chapter. In addition to providing a grounding in the historical and contemporary regulation of marriage, the book includes material throughout on the legal treatment of nonmarital couples and their children. The book also explores the diverse pathways to legal parentage and their impact on parent-child and co-parent relationships. Moreover, because child custody arrangements lead to some of the most acrimonious family disputes, this casebook devotes two chapters to custody: the first treats the initial custody decision, and the second explores continuing litigation concerning visitation, custody, and key childrearing decisions after the initial disposition, including disputes involving third parties such as cohabitants and grandparents. Both custody chapters include disputes involving nonmarital children. The fifth edition includes new and expanded material throughout, such as: Issues arising after Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court's decision on the fundamental right of same-sex couples to marry and to have every state recognize their marriage, and the decision's ramifications throughout family law, including rules for entering marriage, parentage, domestic partnerships, civil unions, and other legal statuses. Changes in marriage regulation, including state bigamy and legal challenges to them and "child marriage," including legislative efforts to raise the minimum age of marriage, with examples of new legislation. Developments involving nonmarital couples, including Blumenthal v. Brewer's affirmation of Illinois's policy against allowing economic remedies for nonmarital couples. Changes in parentage law, including surrogacy legislation, the latest revision of the Uniform Parentage Act (2017), and the new Uniform Nonparent Custody and Visitation Act adopted in 2018. Extensive coverage of debt and family finances, new material drawn from numerous studies on the current economic climate (replacing the excerpt from Elizabeth Warren on bankruptcy), as well as new material on how the 2017 changes to federal tax law affect families; Discussion of Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (S. Ct. 2016) and later developments in the courts and in state legislatures regulating access to abortion; New lead cases on moral fitness in custody adjudication and domestic violence in custody decisions with substantially revised notes; a new lead case on relocation by a custodial parent-here a male nurse-reflecting changes in the law in many jurisdictions; expanded notes on parental decisions involving transgender youth; and a new discussion of disputes over "custody" of animal companions, commonly known as pets. A full chapter containing updated materials about domestic violence and its harmful effects on marital and nonmarital households, and about intrafamily tort actions and family-related tort actions brought against family members by third persons. A full chapter on adoption, including the latest trends and practices in transracial adoption, international adoption by American parents, and adoption by same-sex couples. A fully updated chapter on the child support obligations of marital and non-marital parents.

No federal law in the United States requires that egg or sperm donors or recipients exchange any information with the offspring that result from the donation. Donors typically enter into contracts with fertility clinics or sperm banks which promise them anonymity. The parents may know the donor's hair color, height, IQ, college, and profession; they may even have heard the donor's voice. But they don't know the donor's name, medical history, or other information that might play a key role in a child's development. And, until recently, donor-conceived offspring typically didn't know that one of their biological parents was a donor. But the secrecy surrounding the use of donor eggs and sperm is changing. And as it does, increasing numbers of parents and donor-conceived offspring are searching for others who share the same biological heritage. When donors, recipients, and "donor kids" find each other, they create new forms of families that exist outside of the law. The New Kinship details how families are made and how bonds are created between families in the brave new world of reproductive technology. Naomi Cahn, a nationally-recognized expert on reproductive technology and the law, shows how these new kinship bonds dramatically exemplify the ongoing cultural change in how we think about family. The issues Cahn explores in this book will resonate with anyone-and everyone-who has struggled with questions of how to define themselves in connection with their own biological, legal, or social families.

aCahn explores the relationships that underpin artificial reproductive technology: parenting, donating, and becoming (those who are the children brought to life through this process). . . . Much about assisted reproduction are the relationships that are fostered and challenged by the use of the technology, whether donor to potential parent, potential parent to state, surrogate to intended mother, or embryo to clinic, and after it is all adone, a child to parent.a
--Michele Goodwin, author of "Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts"

The birth of the first test tube baby in 1978 focused attention on the sweeping advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART), which is now a multi-billion-dollar business in the United States. Sperm and eggs are bought and sold in a market that has few barriersto its skyrocketing growth. While ART has been an invaluable gift to thousands of people, creating new families, the use of someone elseas genetic material raises complex legal and public policy issues that touch on technological anxiety, eugenics, reproductive autonomy, identity, and family structure. How should the use of gametic material be regulated? Should recipients be able to choose the abesta sperm and eggs? Should a child ever be able to discover the identity of her gamete donor? Who can claim parental rights?

Naomi R. Cahn explores these issues and many more in Test Tube Families, noting that although such questions are fundamental to the new reproductive technologies, there are few definitive answers provided by the law, ethics, or cultural norms. The regulatory void outside of minimal requirements for gametic testing and limited protection against deceptivemarketing techniques used by fertility clinics creates thorny problems for all involved in the egg and sperm business.

As a new generation of adonor kidsa comes of age, Test Tube Families calls for better regulation of ART. It exhorts legal and policy-making communities to cease applying piecemeal laws and instead create laws that sustain the fertility industry, yet protect the interests of donors, recipients, and the children that result from successful transfers.

Incorporating real-life stories to illustrate her arguments, Cahn provides specific suggestions for legal reforms. The book sets out a series of controversial proposals, including an end to donor anonymity and a plea for states to clarify parentage decisions. She also calls for the federal government to regulate ART processes to ensure that donors are adequately protected against exploitation, that recipients receive the gametes they have been promised, and that the market functions ethically as well as efficiently.

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.

Across the Americas and Europe, the family has changed and marriage is in retreat. To answer the question of what's driving these changes and how they impact social and economic inequality, progressives have typically focused on the economic causes of changing family structures, whereas conservatives tend to stress cultural and policy roots. In this illuminating book, an international group of scholars revisit these issues, offering competing and contrasting perspectives from left, center, and right, while also adding a third layer of analysis: namely, the role of gender - changes in women's roles, male employment patterns, and gendered family responsibilities - in driving family change across three continents. Unequal Family Lives: Causes and Consequences in Europe and the Americas adds richness and depth to our understanding of the relationship between family and economics in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. This title is also available as Open Access.