Based on extensive couple and individual interviews with young same sex couples who have legally formalized their relationships, this book argues that same sex marriages as they are lived need to be understood in terms of interlinked developments in lesbian and gay life, heterosexual relationships and in personal life.

An inspirational and insightful guide for women who want to get it all by doing lessFor women, a glass ceiling at work is not the only barrier to success - it's also the increasingly heavy obligations at home that weigh them down. Women have become accustomed to delegating, advocating and negotiating for themselves at the office, but when it comes to managing households, they still bear the brunt on their own shoulders. A simple solution is staring them in the face...

Emily Matchar offers a smart, measured investigation into the cultural, social, and economic implications of a return to domesticity in this fascinating book “chock-full of historical context, strong research and compelling personal stories” (Christian Science Montor).Amid today’s rising anxieties—the economy, the scary state of the environment, the growing sense that the American Dream hasn’t turned out to be so dreamy after all—a groundswell of women (an...

A provocative and deeply important study of women’s lives, women’s choices—and an ‘unspoken taboo’—that questions the societal pressures forcing women into motherhoodWomen who opt not to be mothers are frequently warned that they will regret their decision later in life, yet we rarely talk about the possibility that the opposite might also be true—that women who have children might regret it. Drawing on years of research interviewing women from a variety of socioec...

In Love and Money, Anne Manne looks at the religion of work – its high priests and sacrificial lambs. As family life and motherhood feel the pressure of the market, she asks whether the chief beneficiaries are self-interested employers and child-care corporations.This is an essay that ranges widely and entertainingly across contemporary culture: it casts an inquisitive eye over the modern marriage of Kevin Rudd and Therese Rein, and considers the time-bind and the shadow e...

For people living in Ontario, as throughout Canada, the period from 1920 to 1960 was one of great change and turmoil – the roaring twenties the Great Depression, the upheaval of war, and the economic boom of the postwar years. One constant in society over those years, however, was the differential treatment that females and males received before the law, especially in regard to family matters and sexuality. A patriarchal justice system, increasingly under the influence of 'expert' opinion ...

In Undoing Monogamy Angela Willey offers a radically interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of monogamy in U.S. science and culture, propelled by queer feminist desires for new modes of conceptualization and new forms of belonging. She approaches the politics and materiality of monogamy as intertwined with one another such that disciplinary ways of knowing themselves become an object of critical inquiry. Refusing to answer the naturalization of monogamy with a naturalization...

The stereotypical nuclear family is in the minority of households, yet remains a powerful ideology. This classic of socialist feminism charts how the family reinforces conditions of inequality, and asks: Why does the family enjoy such popular support, including by feminists and the left? Despite its many problems, The Anti-social Family answers, the family meets real needs. These needs must be taken seriously, and alter-native ways to meet them developed, giving people more choice...

The convergence of dramatic declines in birth rates worldwide, aside from sub-Saharan Africa, the rise of untrammelled global movement of capital, people and information, and the rapid-fire dissemination of a host of new medical technologies has led to the "globalization of motherhood".This book brings together research from the Global North and the Global South to illuminate how contemporary motherhood is being changed by the processes of globalization. It locates declining fertil...

Motherhood remains a complex and contested issue in feminist research as well as public discussion. This interdisciplinary volume explores cultural representations of motherhood in various contemporary European contexts, including France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and it considers how such representations affect the ways in which different individuals and groups negotiate motherhood as both institution and lived experience. It has a particular focus on literature, but it...

This timely collection engages with representations of women and ageing in literature and visual culture. Acknowledging that cultural conceptions of ageing are constructed and challenged across a variety of media and genres, the editors bring together experts in literature and visual culture to foster a dialogue across disciplines. Exploring the process of ageing in its cultural reflections, refractions and reimaginings, the contributors to Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture ana...

Responding to the targeted destruction of women, Fields argues for establishing Gender as a protected class under the Genocide Convention. Cases are explored, historically, anthropologically, psychologically and sociologically, from the author's field research, as well as focuses on morbidity, mortality and demographic documentation data.