Legal And Non Legal Responses

Part one of the book introduced the family concept of private and public with an overview of the family dynamic and its history. The first chapter begins with its main key point of defining, what the author Cherlin’s terms, public and private family. He defines the public family as a one or two adult relationship which could be held by marriage, partnership, or shared parenthood that is responsible for the care of dependents, and the dependents themselves. Cherlin includes the elderly in the term of dependent. In my family’s case my household is a married two adult relationship with two children dependents, however my brother is divorced and living with my epileptic mother and her cohabitating boyfriend, who is the father of my youngest brother. He goes on to define the private family as two or

Families in the world are very different. They come in different shapes and sizes, it can be based on different kinds of relationship, but what all families have in common that it is made of people you love and care. Over past 20 or more years families in the world has changed the most than it has changed in all history. Of course changes in the families are different among cultures and religions. It seems that United States, Canada and Northern Europe families has changed the most, now Nuclear families are dominating there, when in Asia Extended families still takes a greater number. In the richest places in the world numbers of same sex marriages,

The family shows both continuity and changes which can be seen by looking at nuclear families and single parent families respectively. Before 1940s, marriage was considered an important part of society and thought to be a social institution essential for order. Divorce and single parent families were considered dreadful, sex outside marriage was not acceptable, it was a moral offense. The tempo of divorces was very low, but this social behavior soon ended in the post war era. By 1960s, this was no longer the case, as women started to work. They became much more independent, laws were changed and increase in divorces and cohabitation rates had shown that marriage was not compulsory in one’s life.

     The purpose of this paper was to give some insight into the vicious battles that take place over child custody. It is important to mention that raising children is difficult even with two parents, now when there is only one parent the difficultly increases by leaps and bounds. The idea of joint custody seems to sound like a good solution however, Smith (2003) stated

The concept of family has been changing, thus becoming more diverse and complex, throughout contemporary society because of social change (Barnes & Rowe 2013). The Australian Bureau of Statistics (2006) define a family as “two or more persons, one of whom is at least 15 years of age, who are related by blood, marriage (registered or de facto), adoption, step or fostering, and who are usually resident in the same household”. The diversity in a modern family was supported by the Australian Institute of Families (2016) as they analysed data from the current family groups today; couple families, couples without children, lone parents with children, grandparent families and step and blended families, these family types also correlate with that reported by (Barnes & Rowe 2013). Social pressure was a significant factor in family concepts throughout most of the 20th century, as ex-nuptial births rose from 4.8% in 1960 to 34.4% in 2008. Another factor of social pressure, was woman in work, whilst living with dependent children, the rate of these woman in paid work, increased from 43% in

Although marriage is a societal value, there has been a sharp increase in the instances of alternative family relationships, a phenomenon the law has been relatively quick to respond to. BOCSAR figures show that from 1987 to 2007, the number of married couples developed from 63% to 62%, which in the same period the number of de facto relationships (both heterosexual and homosexual) grew from 6% to 9%. As such, a new movement sources desire for

Society’s opinions are constantly, and rapidly changing, and consequently this poses significant challenges to the family law system in Australia. A family is a social unit containing individuals related by blood, marriage or other legally recognised relationships. Family law reforms have been implemented over the past three decades, entailing the recognition of same sex couples. Furthermore, a statutory presumption of shared parenting – as instigated by society’s transitioning values – displays the changing nature of parental responsibility. Not only are society’s views progressing, but surrogacy and birth technologies are

In October 2008, resulting from the Australian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) report; Same-sex: Same Entitlements, a suite of major law reforms passed federal parliament. This included the Family Law Amendment (De facto Financial Matters and Other Matters) Act (Cth), which recognised relationships that exist outside the traditional heteronormative concept of marriage. Prior to these reforms, there were several different definitions of ‘partner’, ‘couple’,

Family law is the most complex aspect of the Australian legal system as it is constantly under review and reform pursuing to adopt society’s continual change in values and principles. The changing of laws in an attempt to be parallel with society is a strenuous process. Nevertheless, legislations are reflective of contemporary society’s values and ethics. Numerous legal issues arise in regards to family including, same sex relationships, domestic violence and divorce ideally on the best interest of the child, where family laws have been imposed to protect individuals and aim to achieve justice.

“Evaluate the effectiveness of legal and non-legal responses in addressing the issue of online harassment.”

Item A makes clear that different sociologists ‘are divided over both the extent of family diversity and its importance’. The Functionalists and the New Rights view increased family diversity as ‘a serious threat’; whilst Robert Chester argues in recent years there has been a ‘shift from the conventional to the neo-conventional

Assess the extent to which social policies reflect and support the traditional nuclear family (24 marks)

In contrast to all of the arguments above, some sociologists have suggested that changes in social policies encourage the nuclear family and discourage any diversity of the family and its structure. For example, marriage laws in the UK only allow people to marry one person at any given time, thus encouraging the nuclear family, and furthermore, the coalition government intend to introduce a married person tax allowance to encourage the idea of marriage and therefore the idea of the nuclear family; a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children, who live together.

The legal system in Australia is continuously evolving and reforming its laws to achieve justice for all members in society. However, contemporary family law issues such as: domestic violence, surrogacy, and same-sex relationships have raised community awareness as important social affairs and the impacts affecting all family members. Therefore, the law along with countless non-government organisations are working towards achieving justice for the modern day Australian family and all it’s members. These are three perfect examples of areas of the law that could be responded to more effectively due to the rapid developments and conflicting ethical views in these areas; impacting on the most vulnerable in our society

Today, in a world of the “postmodern family” the traditional lines of family structure are blurred. Children may come from diverse types of homes, or a couple, married or not may choose to have no children and consider