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Singlehood is becoming an increasingly important social identity category. Thousands of people are members of Facebook groups such as I am my Own Soulmate or Community of Single People. Sologamy, marrying oneself is on the rise. The growing social movement to bring attention to voluntarily single people is creating pressure on the law. Single people are also highly visible when it comes to categories for the allocation of government benefits: eligibility requirements may well differ based on whether an applicant is single or married. This occurs, for example, in the qualifications for long-term care under Medicaid or various public welfare benefits, the availability of portability in utilizing the estate and gift tax, or even in the choices for filing income tax returns. This categorization reflects core assumptions about the privatization of dependency during marriage rather than taking singlehood seriously. Nonetheless, this legal treatment and the growing number of voluntarily single people lead to questions about whether singlehood should be a distinct legal category, a basis for analyzing legal distinctions. Indeed, single people are still not yet adequately explored in legal scholarship. This may be a reflection of cultural (and legal) images of single people that are often negative: single people are lonely, have not yet met the right person, are reluctantly un-partnered, singlehood status is seen as something that is temporary and subject to control--or a reflection that singlehood is such an indeterminate legal category, difficult to define, that it would be too difficult to establish it as a distinct category. In this brief essay, I set out a research agenda for areas for further analysis. In addition to legal issues, the essay explores cultural images of singlehood, discusses the growing movement of voluntarily single people, and then turns to the promises and difficulties of a legal singlehood status. The essay catalogues the ambivalence with which singlehood is treated, both the legal assumptions about the disabilities of being single and also the benefits occasionally accorded to single people. The essay suggests questions about whether, and how, the law might move forward in responding to this increasingly critical social category, either by equalizing treatment, or dissolving entirely categories based on coupledom., INTRODUCTION Until the nineteenth century, loneliness referred to solitude; it lacked emotional associations, although it was considered important for religious reflection and any form of introspection. (1) That has changed. [...]

The pathway to stable and secure middle-class status involves two elements: the ability to postpone family formation to facilitate human capital investment and the ability to marshal the emotional and material resources needed to address children needs. Yet, the ability to meet the middle-class threshold for family investment is under assault as the class-based COVID-19 pandemic vulnerabilities and the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization illustrate. While the American Rescue Plan demonstrates the federal government's considerable ability to address children's needs, Dobbs represents the judicial assault on federal power and the ongoing devolution in responsibility for family support from the federal government to the states, a devolution that increases regional, racial, and class-based inequality. This Article explains the three factors that exacerbate the regional differences. First, we show the development of a new federalism over the past half century that has granted states more authority, undercutting federal ability to establish a floor for available benefits such as health care. Second, we show that increased partisanship and the resulting single party control in many states contributes to the election of more extreme state legislators, with little accountability to voters. Third, we maintain that legislatures have become more responsive to well-funded national business and activist groups and less concerned about local needs. This analysis turns the conventional justification for federalism--that, particularly in family law, smaller units of government are more in touch with local conditions and needs--on its head. Partisan polarization and the outsized influence of lobbying groups on state legislations suggest that the federal government may be better poised to advance family interests than the states. The nation has a collective interest in the well-being of its children, particularly as the importance of investment in human capital becomes increasingly important in an economy rewarding greater education and technological sophistication. The federal government is also better suited, for a variety of reasons, to coordinate the creation of a new family infrastructure. An era of greater inequality, rather than make smaller units of government more responsive to local conditions, makes them more susceptible to the influence of individuals and entities willing to spend near-unlimited sums of money to produce desired results. We use abortion as the lens of our analyses, rendering visible the intersectional nature of this state-sponsored violence: the misogyny of existing government policies (lack of contraception, coerced pregnancy, no support for resulting families), combined with class (wealthier women pay for their own abortions), race (Black women are more likely to have abortions), and the need for investment in children in the new economy., INTRODUCTION 1550 I. CHANGING ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION AND CHANGING FAMILY NEEDS 1556 II. DEVOLUTION AND DOBBS 1563 A. Devolution and Positive Rights 1564 B. Dobbs and the Dismantling of 'Negative' Rights [...]

Family law is for young people. To facilitate child rearing and help spouses pool resources over a lifetime, the law obligates parents to minor children and spouses to each other. Family law's presumption of young, financially interdependent, conjugal couples raising children privileges one family form--marriage--and centers the dependency needs of children. This age myopia fundamentally fails older adults. Families are essential to flourishing in the last third of life, but the legal system offers neither the family forms many older adults want nor the support of family care older adults need. Racial and economic inequities, accumulated across lifetimes, exacerbate these problems. Family law's failures are particularly pressing in light of a tectonic demographic shift underway in our society: Americans are living longer, with half of all five-year-olds today projected to live more than one hundred years. The proportion of older adults as a percentage of our population is also rapidly growing and will soon surpass that of minor children. This Article argues that family law must adapt to the new old age. At a conceptual level, family law should address the interests and needs of families across the life span, not just those of younger people. And it must reflect three core commitments: centering the autonomy interests of older persons, addressing structural inequities, and ensuring that legal mechanisms are efficient and accessible. This conceptual shift leads to a series of practical reforms to laws governing family formation and family support. The interests of older adults will be better served if they have access to a broader array of family forms and can easily customize these family relationships. We thus propose reforms that decenter marriage as the primary option and make it easier to opt into and out of legal obligations. To support the familial caregiving that is essential to wellbeing, we propose a set of reforms to federal, state, and local laws that would provide economic relief and other support to family caregivers. By offering pluralistic family forms, better support for familial caregiving, and an appreciation of the legal implications of the centrality of relationships in the last third of life, this Article charts a path for family law for the one-hundred-year life., ARTICLE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1695 1. FAMILY AND THE ONE-HUNDRED-YEAR LIFE 1703 A. Longer Lives and New Families 1704 1. The New Old Age: A Time of Opportunity (for Some) 1704 [...]

ABSTRACT The price of exit influences the terms of intimate relationships--and constitutes an important factor in distinguishing committed from contingent relationships. With or without legal recognition of the relationship itself [...]

ABSTRACT There are over thirty million people ages forty-four to fifty-five in the civilian labor force in the United States, but the law and legal scholarship are largely silent about [...]

The article focuses on how politicians use the rhetoric of parental rights to justify weakening child labor protections for business interests. Topics include the historical use of parental rights in child labor law debates, recent legislative attacks on child labor protections under the guise of parental rights, and strategies to counter this rhetoric.

Menopause is not a punch line. (1) Menopause is defined by its relationship to menstruation--it is the cessation of menstruation. Medical texts identify menopause as part of the cycle of [...]

COVID-19 exposed the limitations in the current economic system on public and private support for gender equity and the intersecting impact of gender, race, and class in that lack of support. Women of color, particularly those who are Black, Latina, or Native American, were at the intersection of the inequities in the pandemic economy. The catalogue of COVID-19's impact covers all aspects of women's lives: work, family, education, health, reproduction, mental and physical well-being, and leisure. This Article argues that COVID-19 has complex implications for gender equality and gender equity as state and local governments, the federal government, and private actors focus on recovery plans. The negative effects of the pandemic include hundreds of thousands of deaths, lingering health complications for many who have contracted the virus, massive economic disruption and loss for individuals, families, and communities, and the exacerbation of structural inequalities in areas ranging from children's education to women's status. The creative policy responses prompted by the devastating impact of COVID-19 provide promise for building a more transformative and equitable future. Indeed, while a return to the status quo might be possible, developing a roadmap to resilience provides an opportunity to address the gender inequities in our social infrastructure--if there is political will to follow that roadmap. Proposing a feminist recovery plan, this Article focuses on a set of issues relating to pre-existing gender inequities concerning work and family, including the gender pay gap, the child care crisis, and the disproportionate role of women--particularly, women of color--in providing essential but undervalued care work., I. INTRODUCTION 2 II. GENDER AS A RISK FACTOR PRE-PANDEMIC 10 A. THE WORKPLACE: THE GENDER PAY GAP 11 B. PAID AND UNPAID CARE 13 III. GENDER AS A RISK [...]

Author(s): Naomi Cahn [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) Washington, USA Each year, tens of thousands of children are born in the United States through the use of donor eggs, sperm, or [...]