Gender, Family and Society

Book excerpt: Contemporary struggles over the ordering of sexual and parental relationships take place in the context of recession and mass unemployment; ethnic differentiation and antagonism, population ageing and the discovery of ageism, a growing awareness of the pervasiveness of violence and sexual abuse in intimate relationships and the eruption of AIDS as a major health crisis. Gender, Family and Society seeks to provide a sociological understanding of the way in which these key aspects of contemporary social life shape, and are shaped by, gender and family structures.