Author Description

The institution of the family changed hugely during the course of the Twentieth Century. In this major new work, Goran Therborn provides a global history and sociology, and a comparative political analysis of the family as an institution, focusing on three dimensions of family relations: on the rights and powers of fathers and husbands; on marriage, cohabitation and extramarital sexuality; and on fertility and birth control. Therborn's empirical analysis uses a multi-disciplinary approach to show how the major family systems of the world have been formed and developed.