Individualism and Community: Family as a Mediating Concept (From Law and the Community: The End of Individualism?, P 205-218, 1989 Allan C Hutchinson and Leslie J M Green, eds. -- See NCJ-126924)

• NCJ Number: 126925
• Author(s): M J Mossman
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 14 pages
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: Canada

Annotation

This paper offers some tentative ideas about the interaction of concepts of individualism and community in Canadian family law and about the uneven development of law in reflecting the experiences of women and men in family units that dissolve in divorce.

Abstract

Recent reforms in family law in Canada have attempted to balance concepts of individualism and community. Legislation recognizes that husbands and wives have built a socioeconomic unit, the family, and that the assets of that unit must be shared upon the dissolution of the marriage. Following the dissolution of the marriage, however the law recognizes that the dissolution terminates the individuals' responsibility for one another. They become separate individuals responsible for their own lives. The individual former wife no longer has an unfettered right to continued financial support from her husband. The tension between concepts of individualism and community are complicated, however, by gender roles within the family. Because of the gender roles within the family, women are generally less equipped than men to function as financially independent individuals after divorce. If family law is to be just, it must recognize that gender roles within the family impact the capacity of the divorced spouses to generate income as individuals following the divorce. 41 footnotes