An Historical Geography Of The Changing Divorce Law In The United States

This Handbook presents up-to-date scholarship on the causes and predictors, processes, and consequences of divorce and relationship dissolution. Featuring contributions from multiple disciplines, this Handbook reviews relationship termination, including variations depending on legal status, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. The Handbook focuses on the often-neglected processes involved as the relationship unfolds, such as infidelity, hurt, and remarriage. It also covers the legal and policy aspects, the demographics, and the historical aspects of divorce. Intended for researchers, practitioners, counselors, clinicians, and advanced students in psychology, sociology, family studies, communication, and nursing, the book serves as a text in courses on divorce, marriage and the family, and close relationships.

While the formal definition of divorce may be concise and straightforward (legal termination of a marital union, dissolving bonds of matrimony between parties), the effects are anything but, particularly when children are involved. The Americans for Divorce Reform estimates that "40 or possibly even 50 percent of marriages will end in divorce if current trends continue." Outside the U.S., divorce rates have markedly increased across developed countries. Divorce and its effects are a significant social factor in our culture and others. It might be said that a whole "divorce industry" has been constructed, with divorce lawyers and mediators, family counselors, support groups, etc. As King Henry VIII's divorces showed, divorce has not always been easy or accepted. In some countries, divorce is not permitted and even in Europe, countries such as Spain, Italy, Portugal, and the Republic of Ireland legalized divorce only in the latter quarter of the 20th century. This multi-disciplinary encyclopedia covers curricular subjects related to divorce as examined by disciplines ranging from marriage and the family to anthropology, social and legal history, developmental and clinical psychology, and religion, all through a lens of cultural sociology. Features: 550 signed entries, A-to-Z, fill 3 volumes (1,500 pages) in print and electronic formats, offering the most detailed reference work available on issues related to divorce, both in the U.S. and globally. Cross-References and Further Readings guide readers to additional resources. A Chronology provides students with context via a historical perspective of divorce. In the electronic version, the comprehensive Index combines with Cross-References and thematic Reader's Guide themes to provide convenient search-and-browse capabilities. For state and nation entries, uniform entry structure combined with an abundance of statistics facilitates comparison between and across states and nations. Appendices provide further annotated sources of data and statistics.

Sex Seen provides a complex and intriguing account of the changes that have taken place in the social construction of sexuality during the past century. Focusing on Sacramento, California, at the dawn of the twentieth century, Sharon Ullman juxtaposes early cinema, vaudeville performances, and popular newspapers and magazines with insights drawn from close interpretations of transcripts from Sacramento court cases. She demonstrates how attitudes that emerged in the popular discourse—ideas about gender roles, female desire, prostitution, divorce, and homosexuality—often found complex and contradictory expression in the courts. As judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and juries all weighed in with differing opinions, the courtroom itself became a site of multiple discourses that attempted to make sense of a growing sexual chaos. In tracing the birth of modern sexuality, Ullman chronicles the dynamics of social change during a unique cultural moment and explains the shifts in the sexual ethos of turn-of-the-century America. Instead of telling the familiar story of steadily increasing liberation of sexual urges, Ullman chronicles the complex confusions and negotiations of an increasingly public sexual discourse. She relates how laws against cross-dressing gained force at the same time that female impersonation became popular in vaudeville acts, how images of prostitutes were changed by the commercialization of the female body in advertising and film, and how visible expression of female desire was submerged in rape and divorce proceedings. Ullman blends social history, textual analysis, and film and performance criticism to explain how sexuality and desire became an essential part of personal identity in this century. Her keen, accessible account of a community on the brink of the modern era offers a provocative interpretation of the seeds of our sexual present.

This volume unpacks the long history and varied meanings of the emancipation of American slaves.

Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons is the biography of a writer who vividly depicted alien creatures and new worlds. As the author of the Dragonriders of Pern series, McCaffrey (1926–2011) was one of the most significant writers of science fiction and fantasy. She was the first woman to win the Hugo and Nebula awards, and her 1978 novel The White Dragon was the first science-fiction novel to appear on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. This biography reveals a fascinating and complex figure, one who created and re-created her fiction by drawing on life experiences. At various stages, McCaffrey was a beautiful young girl who refused to fit into traditional gender roles in high school, a restless young mother who wanted to write, an American expatriate who became an Irish citizen, an animal lover who dreamed of fantasy worlds with perfect relationships between humans and beasts, and a wife trapped in an unhappy marriage just as the women's movement took hold. Author Robin Roberts conducted interviews with McCaffrey, her children, friends, and colleagues, and used archival correspondence and contemporary reviews and criticism. The biography examines how McCaffrey's early interests in theater, Slavonic languages and literature, and British history, mythology, and culture all shaped her science fiction. The book is a nuanced portrait of a writer whose appeal extends well beyond readers of her chosen genre.

In the aftermath of America's centennial celebrations of 1876, readers developed an appetite for chronicles of the nation's past. Born amid this national vogue, the field of American literary history was touted as the balm for numerous "ills"_from burgeon

Shedding new light on contemporary campaigns to encourage marriage among welfare recipients and to prosecute "deadbeat dads," Wives without Husbands traces the efforts of Progressive reformers to make "runaway husbands" support their families. Anna R. Igra investigates the interrelated histories of marriage and welfare policy in the early 1900s, revealing how reformers sought to make marriage the solution to women's and children's poverty. Igra taps a rich trove of case files from the National Desertion Bureau, a Jewish husband-location agency, and follows hundreds of deserted women through the welfare and legal systems of early twentieth-century New York City. She integrates a broad range of topics, including Americanization as a gendered process, breadwinning as a measure of manhood, the relationship between consumer culture and social policy formation, the class dimensions of family law, and the Jewish community as a source of welfare policy innovation. Igra analyzes the history of antidesertion reform from its emergence in social policy debates, through the establishment of domestic relations courts, to Depression relief programs. She shows that early twentieth-century reformers, by attempting to make instrumental use of poor people's intimate relations, anticipated welfare policies in our own time that promote marriage as an answer to poverty.