New Frontiers in Family Law: Introduction

A new discussion about families and care is unfolding in family law. Reproductive technologies, globalization, and left-of-center critiques of same-sex marriage offer an especially fertile environment for imagining sex, intimacy, care, and reproduction outside marriage and the nuclear family. These reconceptualizations continue the revisioning enabled by reproducti~e freedom, no-fault divorce, and women's entrance and integration into the workforce. The implications of these trends are significant.

What happens to family law when a range of relationships and intimate practices .displace heterosexuaf marriage from the epicenter of thinking about the family? Although the full effects of this diffusion are not yet clear, certain trends are emerging.