The challenges for family law and family rigths in the changing european societies

Abstract

Family Law and family rights are, without doubt, currently undergoing changes in that underlying values have been inverted. Major differences can however be observed and different models prevail in the contemporary States. There are four separate options, in fact, according to whether one adopts a view based on liberalism/authoritarianism or on egalitarianism/non-egalitarianism: the absolute nuclear family, the egalitarian nuclear family, the birth family and the community family. Family Law and family rights can be said to revolve around these principles. This essay therefore examines equality with regard to drafting legislation in the light of both dimensions and considers the current tendency to specify the rights of the family. The essay concludes with an analysis of some of those rights and setting out the cultural and ideological, political and economic issues that necessarily serve to question the subject of this study.