Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic data, I will discuss the links between culturally-constructed expectations for the life-course, the expectation that women have children, and the achievement of a socio-economic status sufficient to permit having children, for the case of "late-forming" families in Spain.

Paper long abstract:

How does family formation fit into the life-course, in the case of "late-forming" families in Spain?

The "right" age for family formation is constructed culturally, as is the concept of generation. Some people violate the norms by forming families "too early" or "too late." Building on research on life-course (O'Rand and Krecker, 1990), vital conjunctures (Johnson-Hanks, 2002) generation (Martínez de Codes, 2005), intergenerational transfers (Heady, 2012), and care-giving and dependency (López de la Vieja, 2012), this paper will discuss "late-forming" families in Spain: families formed by first-time parents "considered biologically and socially older, with a greater generational difference between parents and children than is conventionally accepted, that is 35 to 40 years" (Hernández Corrochano, 2012). Statistical data for Spain show an increasing number of "late-forming" families, many of which resort to ARTs and adoption to have children.

Our research (funded by a Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grant, a Wenner-Gren grant, and a Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia grant) shows that life-course developments and stresses, including the stretching out of life course periods such as schooling, job consolidation, and couple consolidation, seem to lead to late family formation. Different groups delay family formation: dual-career couples awaiting job consolidation, same-sex couples who often decide to have children later, and single mothers by choice, among others. Using ethnographic data, I will discuss the links between culturally-constructed expectations for the life-course, the strong expectation that women have children, and the achievement of a socio-economic status considered sufficient to permit having children.

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Paper short abstract:

ARTs have been evolving to separate procreation and gestation from social parenting. This enables same-sex to resemble to the nuclear family model. My PhD research analyzes this process in Israel. I will discuss norms changes through the assemblage of technology, state regulations and culture.

Paper long abstract:

Assisted Reproduction Technologies take an integral part in family building practices in the recent decades. Researchers have pointed to the ways in which these technologies refract our notions of kinship and relatedness, and enable reconstruction of the family model (Franklin, 1998; Strathern, 1992). These changes are very significant in the lives of same-sex couples. Technological innovation enables limiting the participation of members of the opposite sex in family creation, by purchasing gametes and paying for gestational surrogacy. Same-sex couples thus can achieve procreation without having social ties and commitments towards their procreation collaborators. This potential is however limited by state regulations, availability of technology and the access to funding for the procedure.

The state of Israel was the first to legalize and regulate commercial surrogacy. Current regulations prohibit same sex couples from commissioning surrogacy in the state. At the same time, the state acknowledges surrogacy procedures that were performed by gay couples outside the state borders, and enables providing parenthood decrees to the biological father, and through adoption to the non-biological father.

My research proposes ethnography of Israeli gay men who pursue parenthood through surrogacy. Through in-depth interview and official documentation analysis I discuss the reproduction of the 'New Nuclear Family': a same-sex, couple-based parenting model which closely imitates the model of the heterosexual nuclear family. This case study displays the plasticity and fluidity of social structures, and the importance of social construction in shaping the usage of technology and social relations alike.

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Paper short abstract:

Family is considered as the primary social unit of human existence. The present paper attempts to understand the dynamics of family in the Indian context, looking into the changes in the structural and functional aspects of family with their multiple implications for the emerging social realities.

Paper long abstract:

Family is traditionally considered in all societies as the primary social unit of human existence and hence the basis for expressing and moulding the basic tenets of social behavior and relationship in society. It has been a subject of interest and of serious study at various levels down the centuries, and has always attracted the attention of the social scientists, for long. In India, for most part, the traditional system had survived for centuries without any major institutional alterations or dislocations. With the advent of the British, and later with the processes of industrialization, modernization, and the recent trends of globalisation, the structural features and the functional implications of family have started changing, altering its traditional norms and inherent dynamics. Today, it is one of the social institutions which are undergoing radical changes, although the rate of change may vary across societies, communities and regions. The present paper attempts to understand the dynamics of family, focusing mainly on the structural variations, nature of spousal relationships and pre-nuptial intimacies, and the gender-neutral productive-income prospects, all of which bring about variations in the structural and functional aspects of family with multiple implications for the emerging social realities. The paper also discusses some of the emerging challenges in the changing family system, looking into its possible impact and implications for the future of the Indian Society.

Paper short abstract:

For the purpose of this paper, I chose to focus on inheritance conflicts as a backdoor to understanding contemporary family dynamics, hierarchies, gender and age relationships as well as the way in which they interact with the Beninese justice.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last few years, the number of inheritance disputes handled by the Beninese state courts has drastically increased. In Cotonou, State of Persons courtrooms are so crowded that people even have to stand outside during registration. What are those people fighting about, why and how do they proceed?

For the purpose of this paper, I will follow Beninese families' itineraries throughout inheritance disputes. When a parent dies, how are commodities managed or shared? What are the discussions and the conflicts resulting from those? What causes people to cease the courts? I will look into the arguments that are raised and the means that are mobilized by the parties, but also by their relatives. What does the 'extended family' have to say about children fighting in court? Those conflicts are about property, about who it belongs to and whether it should be sold. They are about the economic and symbolic value of land and houses. They are about family norms or "traditions" and the individualistic notion that "no one can be forced to remain in joint ownership" (CPF, art 752). Inheritance conflicts are now settled by a new Code on Persons and Family (2004) promoting gender and generational equality. How is it appropriated by both the Beninese families and the judicial officials tasked to enforce it?

In short, what are the different steps and justifications behind inheritance disputes, how are they eventually settled and what does it mean with regards to family dynamics in contemporary urban West Africa?

Paper short abstract:

El mundo actual lleva una trayectoria de grandes cambios que está transformando a las familias en una sociedad de consumo. En lo que se esta perdiendo los valores eticos y humanos de los seres humanos. En definitiva vivimos en una sociedad materialista que depende básicamente en el consumo.

Paper long abstract:

La esperanza es lo último que hay que perder como la fe que es un medio para sobrevivir que el ser humano a llevado en toda su trayectoria. En la que el hombre siempre ha vivido en familia en la que había un respeto a los padres que eran los que nos conducían a lo largo de nuestra vida desde que nacemos nos tienen que enseñar como hay que llevar una vida digna y honesta.

Pero las tecnologias y el consumismo nos esta llevando a un mundo despreciable en lo que lo único que cuenta es tener buenos productos de alta tecnologia.

Pero estos productos está destruyendo nuestros planeta que es la madre de todos los seres vivos que la habitan. Que hay manera de llevar un mundo mejor para nuestros descendientes no ese mundo superficial y destructivo.

Esta sociedad actual se ha trasformando en una manera de vivir en el día a día en lo que lo que importan son las redes sociales que trasforman en un mundo totalmente globalizado.

Las nuevas tecnologías y las redes sociales mueven a la población mayoritariamente juvenil a unos niveles altos de intereses comunes. En lo que se ha ido perdiendo valores eticos, humanismo y solidarios.

En lo que el mundo ha ido cambiando desde mediados del siglo XX hasta nuestros dias perdiendo todos los valores familiares que raigaban las sociedades.

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Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnohistory study in Southern Europe, the goal of this paper is to analize the possible double symbolic dimensions of milk: as food, because of our conditions as mammals, and as a bodily fluid able to construct kinship relations, known as milk kinship or milk tie, when milk is shared.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to expose that maybe, as Anthropologists, we have been too reductionists in our analythical categories and theoretical approaches, due to our bio-genetic reproductive theory of kinship, that we have not considered enough the existence of other types of kinship in some societies, in the past as in present times, than those coming only from sharing blood and genes, what about milk? can we consider human milk in a double symbolic dimension: as food, because of our conditions as mammals, and as a bodily fluid able to construct kinship relations when shared (it could be through the fact of breastfeeding by a woman, not the biological mother, known as a wet nurse, or just from the fact of accepting milk from from milk banks when a woman is not able to breastfeed her own child.

In this paper we will analize the role of domestic wet nurses in the construction of milk kinship in XIX-XX Spain. Rural peasant women that emigrated for more than a century to different cities in order to breastfeed babies of the upper classes: aristocracy, burgeoise and the Royal family. We will analyze how we moved from the vocabulary of market, when hiring a domestic wet nurse in order to get a service, the nursing of a baby not her own, to the vocabulary of kinship (milk brother/milk sister, milk mother.) and, what did it really mean, specially for the poorest and more needed involved in this new relationship, in this case the peasantry.

Paper short abstract:

Dual-career families have drastically increased in our Indian societies since women are taking a more prevalent role in the workforce. Against this backdrop, the present study makes an humble attempt to study the role conflict among the working women in dual career families in Sambalpur city of Odisha, India. Data were collected by interview, observation, case study and focus-group discussion methods from sixty married women, working in different government and non-government sectors in Sambalpur city. The study explores how the multiplicities of familial and professional roles are creating conflicts among these working women due to lack of familial support and sympathy.

Paper long abstract:

Role conflict of employed women in dual career families has become an inevitable subject for discussion in the context of recent globalization. Women's liberation movements in the last centuries along with changing socio-economic dynamics and higher educational exposure expanded the opportunities for qualified women in India to enter in to the workforce for personal satisfaction and self-enrichment rather than simply for supplemental income in family. In this changed social milieu women are now entering into the labour force taking up different professional roles with admirable designations in the organizations. Thus playing several roles simultaneously with inadequate time and energy often creates conflicts in the role performance of these working women. Against this backdrop, the present study makes an humble attempt to study the role conflict among the working women in dual career families in Sambalpur city of Odisha. It tries to explore how the multiplicities of familial and professional roles are creating conflicts among these women in the dual career families and analyzes how they are failed to balance these roles due to lack of sympathy and familial support. Data were collected from sixty married women working in different government and non-government sectors in Sambalpur city. Adjustment in family life depends on the attitude and personality traits of individual. Often the new sets of demands by the members in family and unpreparedness on the part of these overloaded working women to fulfill them are the major causes of these conflicts which lead to disharmonious functioning of the family structure.

Paper short abstract:

The present paper has done an in-depth analysis of the impact of assisted reproductive procedures on the infertile women irrespective of the age and reproductive complications. The only uniform and bold advocacy can clear the confusion about this procedure among the general public.

Paper long abstract:

Rightly or wrongly, infertile women in all walks of life in India perceive the assisted reproduction as the only way out to get rid of stigmatized identity in order to bypass the option of adopting the child as this will not serve the purpose of being the prospective mother of her biological progeny. There is a strong relation between the UN declaration of Article 16 (…to found a family…) and stringent ethical framework to closely monitoring the procedure of assisted reproduction no matter varies from country to country to restrict the aspiring infertile women (couples) to avail this technique. This restriction further widens the possible field of medical tourism. As a result of that, post menopausal women used to avail this technology to become a mother in India where the ethical framework in the form of ICMR guidelines is only there in black and white. Unless there is a clear explanation about the modus operandi of the entire procedure of assisted reproductive techniques, the sustainability of the verbal promise is going to persist. The present paper has done an in-depth analysis of the impact of assisted reproductive procedures on the infertile women irrespective of the age and reproductive complications. The paper wants to conclude that the only uniform and bold advocacy can clear the confusion about this procedure among the general public. Cognitive dissonance tends to lead dissatisfaction and unhappiness, which is the painful condition in which the infertile women underscore the positive outcome through this technology.