This chapter explores the notion of ‘family’ from a philosophical perspective. EU family law recognises that there is such a thing as the family and that it merits special legal protection. Yet, different societies define what counts as a family, and its members, in different ways. The changes in family forms over the last hundred years have also led some to argue that ‘the family’ no longer exists, and, moreover, that it is not special. These arguments are criticised. It is argued that there can be a single concept of ‘the family’ under which different instances fall. The chapter also argues that giving a special legal status to the family requires being able satisfactorily to define what it is and offers a defence of a ‘functional’ definition. It then considers ways in which the family - as defined - might be thought uniquely valuable, critically reviewing appeals to the goods it provides and emphasising the key public good of families in rearing children. The probable impossibility of unifying EU family law does not mean that it is inconsistent to argue that a single concept of family encompasses many different national forms and that the family, in its diversity, continues to merit a special legal status.

Using the changing legal bases for divorce, this chapter first canvasses how the traditional dividing lines between the so-called ‘progressive North’, consisting of predominantly protestant jurisdictions, and the ‘conservative South’ with predominantly catholic populations have faded away in family law – only to be replaced by a new dividing line between Eastern and Western European jurisdictions regarding the recognition of same-sex relationships and same-sex families. It then discusses whether ‘the family’ is part of the ‘European Way of Life’, proclaimed by the European Commission as one of its policy and strategy aims. However, different understandings of what a ‘family’ is create tensions which manifest, in particular, when the Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights hand down decisions which mandate the recognition of family forms, creating elements of an institutional European Family Law. The chapter concludes by expressing the hope that in the long term the tensions between different conceptions of family can be resolved within the existing frameworks in Europe and that a family in one country will also be a family in all other European countries.

This chapter focuses on adolescents’ use of strategies to conceal information about their whereabouts, behaviors, and activities from parents. The chapter describes the concealing strategies assessed by researchers, adolescents’ relative use of strategies, and adolescents’ reasons for concealing information from parents. Concealment strategies range from partial disclosure to secrecy to lying. Most adolescents use partial and passive concealment strategies (e.g. omitting details) more often than active concealment strategies (e.g. lying). Adolescents conceal activities they believe to be personal and to avoid punishment. The chapter also summarizes research on potential implications of concealment for both the parent–adolescent relationship and the adolescent’s adjustment. Research evidence links the use of concealing strategies with poorer quality parent–adolescent relationships and with poorer behavioral and psychological adjustment. Recommended future directions include integrating research on concealment with the literatures on self-disclosure, lying, and secrecy outside the parent–child relationship, and further tests of the hypothesized benefits of concealment.

Take a broad look at American family and friendhip ntworks, examining marriage, child-rearing, and other family and personal relations among the consuls and members of the American community in the Mediterranean.

This chapter introduces my research questions, framework, and main findings. It begins with two striking vignettes to engage the readers and outline the significance of the two basic questions that motivate this book and intersect at children's social cognition: How do humans learn morality? How do we make sense of fieldnotes? The chapter situates the book in intellectual history, including the Wolfs’ original research, its connections to the Six Cultures Study, and its legacies. It then presents a new framework of cognitive anthropology distinctive from the behaviorist paradigm that motivated the original research. I situate the book in three broad streams of discussions: (1) theoretical conversations between anthropology and psychology on morality; (2) cross-cultural research on childhood learning; (3) studies of Chinese kinship, families, and childhood. I explain why it is important to study children to understand morality, human relatedness, and cultural transmission. I also make the case for reanalyzing historical fieldnotes. I then lay out a methodology that incorporates computational approaches into ethnography, summarize my main arguments, and outline the book structure.

Considering the sources and material evidence available from Rome, this chapter focuses on the evidence of women’s associations with these soldiers of the different units stationed in the capital. These women were often labeled as “wives” in written documentation. By analyzing the available evidence, predominantly on funerary monuments, the authors expand the discussion of the social expectations and realities of women associated with the military in the context of the Empire’s center. The evidence gives us a rich image of an aspect of society that has not yet been explored, while at the same time providing a new perspective on the life of Roman soldiers. The origin of the women and their social background is treated as a relevant factor for their integration in the military community and – as inhabitants of Rome – in the community of the city. In this context it is interesting to consider the origin of personal relationships. In some cases, it seems that women accompanied soldiers to Rome from a provincial location and other cases suggest the relationship began in the capital itself.

A substantial collection of sources indicates that women constituted a considerable part of the travelers in the first centuries of the Roman Empire, a period in which traveling became increasingly popular with various social classes. These travelers have left traces of their experiences en route in personal letters on papyri and ostraca, in graffiti and on votive inscriptions. Classical scholarship has long ignored these sources, even though they offer us a unique insight into female experiences and self-representation. Recent excavations on and near the trade routes in the Eastern and Western Desert of Egypt, along which units of the Roman army were positioned in military outposts, protecting and controlling the area, have uncovered letters in which women – most of them of lower rank – discussed their concerns about traveling from and to the military camps of their husbands, fathers, or brothers. When combined with other sources such as papyri and graffiti, these documents give insight into the mobility of the female relatives of soldiers in Roman Egypt. They tell us something about the reasons why they decided to undertake journeys, the distance they covered (some while being heavily pregnant), where they stayed, and the dangers they encountered during the trip.

Recent research is demonstrating that other women and children, besides those in senior officers’ families, lived inside Roman military bases during the Principate; however, such women are rarely discussed in written sources. Also, the archaeological remains of military bases essentially lack the types of evidence for sexed bodies and gendered practices that can be found in burial contexts and figurative representations. This chapter discusses how more material-cultural approaches to artifactual remains from such sites can be used to investigate gendered identities and lived socio-spatial practices, and to develop better understanding of the place of such women in these hypermasculine spaces. This chapter is concerned with developing approaches to the artifactual remains from these sites, and the potential range of people and activities they represent, to investigate the presence of women within the fortification walls of these bases, and the roles that they may have played here. It demonstrates how an integrated approach to “gendering” artifacts can be used to explore the probabilities, rather than the certainties, of artifacts as gender attributes and how analyses of artifact distribution patterns can be used to identify women who often are not identified through other media, and so seeks solutions to identifying gendered behaviors.

Traditional study of Roman military communities has ignored or erased women and their families from daily military life. Archaeological and documentary evidence reveal the inescapable fact that residents of extended military communities interacted inside and outside Roman forts through habitation, commercial endeavors, and social obligations. As a result of having been segregated by historians into external communities women have been acknowledged as existing, but otherwise ignored. Not only have their social and economic contributions been disregarded, but even their identities have been overlooked. This chapter reviews the basic reasons historians have removed women from our conception of life in military contexts and then discusses the evidence for the presence and contributions of military women. The chapter closes with discussion of how the volume is organized. As becomes clear, the presence of women, children, and families within the forts and in the extramural settlements of the Roman army is beyond doubt, thanks to the diligent and sometimes contentious work of scholars over the last thirty years.

The topic of women in Roman military communities (i.e., military women) did not suddenly appear in the late twentieth century. One could say its emergence is the result of the novel idea that women were present in most aspects of life in the ancient world. Women have been around the military much longer than the general or professional reader might realize. As a topic, military women have not generally been a group to which anyone paid sustained attention until the last decades of the twentieth century. The topic gained interest as social and cultural history became welcome components of historians’ toolboxes and as archaeological fieldwork has yielded new evidence and innovative methodologies have led to updated analyses of old artifacts. This chapter reviews the historiography of the debate over the long duration of Roman studies. In particular, the authors focus on how research into these military women and their families has slowly diversified and grown over the last three decades. The field is strong and growing to provide a more complete understanding of the Roman military.

This chapter explores the topic of Roman military families’ mobility in the late first through third centuries CE by discussing a case study of British families abroad. It surveys the evidence for families that came from Roman Britain and settled on the continent. In doing so, the author assesses and compares various types of evidence (literary, epigraphic, and archaeological) to discuss the case of British military families on the move, families that had been present in the Roman Empire but not accounted for in the modern scholarly literature. The sources analyzed include literary texts, inscriptions, military diplomas and personal dress accessories that the members of such families took with them as part of personal possessions during their travels. Since most sources available to trace such families come from the Roman military context, the focus lies on emigrant soldiers’ families. The first section relies heavily on the historical texts and epigraphic material while the second part is devoted to the discussion of the potential and limitations of material culture in our search for migrant communities. The chapter provides a case to support the view that British military families traveled far and wide in the empire.

How are dictionaries shaped by social history, and how far do dictionaries themselves shape social history? Wordlists and dictionaries (broadly defined) reflect particular perspectives and may be adapted for new audiences. This chapter maps the most significant historical intersections of English dictionaries and Anglophone societies. It spans the shift from English as a colonized to a colonizing language, from the medieval period to around 1900. Its building blocks include intersecting conceptions of gender roles, the family, social status, work and industrialization, as well as urbanization and racialization. Some other concepts remain implicit. Education (inside as well as outside the home) interconnects every section. It was in religious contexts that Latin was codified and methods were perfected for organizing words within books as well as books within libraries. The idea of the nation was later shaped by the Oxford English Dictionary with history and by the state with nineteenth-century mass primary education. Overall, tensions between human agency and determinism are brought constantly into the foreground. The focus on English lets me contrast revisions of the ‘same’ text within the limits of a handbook chapter. My anecdotal approach relates social changes to identifiable revisions and initiatives by individual lexicographers.

Migration destabilized family life, gender, and sexuality. Whereas most Turkish guest workers traveled alone during the formal recruitment period (1961–1973), West Germany’s subsequent policy of family reunification sparked the increased migration of spouses and children. This chapter shows that, although migrants developed strategies to maintain connections to home, separation anxieties and fears of abandonment loomed. The departure of able-bodied young workers strained local economies, upended gender roles, and separated loved ones, sparking tensions at home: were guest workers sending enough money home, communicating enough, and remaining faithful to spouses? In Germany, reports about sex between male guest workers and German women fueled Orientalist tropes about “foreigners,” perpetuated stereotypes about Turkish men’s propensity toward violence, and stoked fears about the transgression of national and racial borders. Women left behind worried that their husbands would commit adultery while abroad. Guest workers’ children were viewed simultaneously as victims and threats: some stayed behind in Turkey, others were brought to Germany, and thousands of “suitcase children” (Kofferkinder) repeatedly moved back and forth between the two countries with their bags perpetually packed. As physical estrangement evolved into emotional estrangement, the perceived abandonment of the family came to represent the abandonment of the nation.