Beyond standard families in advanced countries

Abstract

Same-sex relationships, marriage, and parenthood have been de-criminalized and are even legally sanctioned in many advanced countries. It has also to be recognized that the standard heteronormative family tends to remain privileged in the policies and laws of advanced countries. Consequently, the authors examine the current state of knowledge regarding the compositional, interpretative, and policy dimensions of family diversity in several advanced countries. The departure from the standard family and the diversification of family forms is observable to differing degrees in all advanced countries. A comparative lens to examine variations among countries is necessary in order to understand the extent to which non-standard families are supported in various welfare states. The authors also ask how doing family in non-standard families is justified and accounted for, both externally and internally, in the face of the dominant cultural prescriptions of the biologically based nuclear family, heteronormativity, and the gender binary.