Modern Couples Sharing Money, Sharing Life


Book Description

This collection is the result of a five-year-long collaboration of sociologists in Sweden, Spain and the United States. In-depth, extended interviews with couples explore their daily lives and provide insights into the impact of modernity, gender roles, and expectations of the meaning of money and the complex financial reality of households.




Modern Couples Sharing Money, Sharing Life


Book Description

This collection is the result of a five-year-long collaboration of sociologists in Sweden, Spain and the United States. In-depth, extended interviews with couples explore their daily lives and provide insights into the impact of modernity, gender roles, and expectations of the meaning of money and the complex financial reality of households.




Sharing Lives, Dividing Assets


Book Description

With many couples separating each year, the question of how to determine the financial and property consequences of such separation has always been a problem area within family law. Should the principles be the same for married and cohabiting couples? Should the division of assets reflect the parties' own expectations or norms imposed by society? These are just two of the questions which the essays in this collection seek to explore. Recent cases in the House of Lords have seen willingness on the part of the judges to seek out empirical studies to inform their deliberations, but if the law is to engage with empirical data then much more information is needed, both about the arrangements people make during their relationships, and about the impact of the law when a relationship breaks down. This inter-disciplinary work brings together leading academics in the fields of law, economics, sociology and psychology in an attempt to provide some of the missing empirical information. Part I sets out the legal framework and identifies the importance of empirical studies for this area. Part II examines how couples (whether cohabitants or spouses) manage their money during their relationships. Part III then considers the impact that the law currently has on separating couples - examining how legal principles translate into reality and what their consequences are for the parties. Finally, Part IV considers the issue of legal rationality: it may be rational for the law to be shaped by patterns of behaviour, but how far will individual couples allow their behaviour to be shaped by the law?




The Palgrave Handbook of Family Sociology in Europe


Book Description

This handbook provides a meaningful overview of topical themes within family sociology as an academic field as well as empirical realities in various societal contexts across Europe. More than sixty prominent European scholars’ original texts present the field’s main theoretical and methodological approaches in addition to issues such as families as relationships, parental arrangements, parenting practices and child well-being, family policies in welfare state regimes, family lives in migration, and family trajectories. Presenting cutting-edge research on findings, theoretical interpretations, and solutions to methodological challenges, it is a timely tool for researchers, teachers, students, and family practitioners who wish to familiarise themselves with the state of family sociology in Europe.




Wealth and Poverty in Close Personal Relationships


Book Description

At a time of global and domestic economic crisis, the financial aspects of domestic and familial relationships are more important and more strained than ever before. The focus of this book is on the distribution of wealth and poverty in traditional and non-traditional familial relationships. The volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to explore the way in which money matters are structured and governed within close personal relationships and the extent to which they have an impact on the nature and economic dynamics of relationships. As such, the key areas of investigation are the extent to which participation in the labour market, unpaid caregiving, inheritance, pensions and welfare reform have an impact on familial relationships. The authors also explore governmental and legal responses by investigating the privileging of certain types of domestic relationships, through fiscal and non-fiscal measures, and the differential provision on relationship breakdown. The impact of budget and welfare cuts is also examined for their effect on equality in domestic relationships.




Family Life, Family Law, and Family Justice


Book Description

Family Life, Family Law, and Family Justice: Tying the Knot combines history, social science, and legal analysis to chart the evolution and interdependence of family life and family law, portray current trends in family life, explain the pressing policy challenges these trends have produced, and analyze the changes in family law that are essential to meeting these challenges. The challenges are large and pressing. Across the industrialized West, nonmarital birth, relational stress, multi-partner fertility, and relationship dissolution have increased, producing a dramatic rise in single parenthood, poverty, and childhood risk. This concentration of familial and economic risk accelerates socioeconomic inequality and retards intergenerational mobility. Although the divide is most pronounced in the United States, the same patterns now affect families throughout the Western world. Across the European Union, there are 9.2 million "lone" parents, and just under half of their families live in poverty. Tying the Knot demonstrates how today’s family patterns are deeply rooted in long-standing, class-based differences in family life and explains why these class-based differences have accelerated. It explains how the values that guide family law development inevitably reflect the world in which families live and develops a new family law capable of meeting the needs of twenty-first century families. The book will be of considerable interest to family specialists from a number of fields, including law, demography, economics, history, political science, public health, social policy, and sociology.




Same Sex Marriages


Book Description

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.




Routledge Handbook of Family Law and Policy


Book Description

Changes in family structures, demographics, social attitudes and economic policies over the last 60 years have had a large impact on family lives and correspondingly on family law. The Second Edition of this Handbook draws upon recent developments to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date global perspective on the policy challenges facing family law and policy round the world. The chapters apply legal, sociological, demographic and social work research to explore the most significant issues that have been commanding the attention of family law policymakers in recent years. Featuring contributions from renowned global experts, the book draws on multiple jurisdictions and offers comparative analysis across a range of countries. The book addresses a range of issues, including the role of the state in supporting families and protecting the vulnerable, children’s rights and parental authority, sexual orientation, same-sex unions and gender in family law, and the status of marriage and other forms of adult relationships. It also focuses on divorce and separation and their consequences, the relationship between civil law and the law of minority groups, refugees and migrants and the movement of family members between jurisdictions along with assisted conception, surrogacy and adoption. This advanced-level reference work will be essential reading for students, researchers and scholars of family law and social policy as well as policymakers in the field.




Economic Psychology


Book Description

A comprehensive overview of contemporary economic psychology Economic Psychology presents an accessible overview of contemporary economic psychology. The science of economic mental life and behavior is increasingly relevant as people are expected to take more responsibility for their household and personal economic decisions. The text will, in addition to reviewing current knowledge on each topic presented, consider the practical and policy implications for supporting economic decision making. Economic Psychology examines the central aspects of adult decision making in everyday life and includes the theories of economic decision making based on risk, value and affect, and theories of intertemporal choice. The text reviews the nature and behavioral consequences of economic mental representations about such things as material possessions, money and the economy. The editor Robert Ranyard—a noted expert on economic psychology—presents a life-span developmental approach, from childhood to old age. He also reviews the important societal issues such as charitable giving and economic sustainability. This vital resource: Reviews the economic psychology in everyday life including financial behaviour such as saving and tax-paying and matters such as entrepreneurial activity Offers an introduction to the field and traces the emergence of the discipline, from Adam Smith to George Katona and Herbert Simon Includes information on societal issues such as charitable giving and pro-environmental behaviour Considers broader perspectives on economic psychology: life-span psychological development from childhood to old age Written for students of psychology, Economic Psychology reviews the most important information on contemporary economic psychology with a focus on individual and household economic decision making, ranging widely across financial matters such as borrowing and saving, and economic activities such as buying, trading, and working.




A Research Agenda for Financial Resources within the Household


Book Description

This cross-disciplinary Research Agenda offers an in-depth exploration into financial resources within households, focussing specifically on how they are managed, how they are distributed and with what results. Bringing together an array of leading experts from the Global South and North, this Research Agenda examines the challenges facing researchers in this area, investigates developments in the field and analyses how research interacts with current public policy.