Compared to a few generations ago, our intimate relationships now involve more personal choices about our partners and sexual behaviour. However, personal choices are also shaped by our family circumstances and events in the wider society, such as changes in educational opportunities,employment trends, social policies, technological innovations, media representations, and new ideas about human rights or personal entitlements. Patterns are noticeable in family life, including rising rates of cohabitation among both heterosexual and same-sex couples, fewer births but more outsidemarriage, and higher rates of separation, re-partnering and stepfamilies. In fact, similar trends are apparent in most Western industrialized countries.New public expectations have heightened controversies about who is responsible for protecting and supporting vulnerable family members and those in need. Public debates have also questioned the validity of new forms of marriage, sought solutions to declining fertility and the enforcement of childsupport after separation, and examined new ways of interacting with immigrants whose family practices diverge from the majority. This book aims to understand how relationships and family practices have changed over the past decades in Western industrialized countries, and to differentiate between actual changes and the misconceptions voiced in political speeches or perpetuated in the media. Discussions of social research willreveal that our personal choices about intimate partners, having children, dissolving relationships, and maintaining contact with parents and siblings are influenced by our family and cultural upbringing, our socioeconomic circumstances, the social policy environment, and political and economicevents in the larger society. This means that the nature of family and personal life is always changing although some aspects remain remarkably stable.By examining relationships and families in Canada within a global context, we are better able to understand the diverse factors that influence personal choices about love, sex and marriage.

Maureen Baker is Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, University of Auckland.

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