Susan B. Boyd

• University of British Columbia

This paper explores Canadian family law cases involving claims of parental alienation and of family violence from 2014–2018, reporting the data on these claims, their resolution, and their impacts upon custody and access. A close reading of those cases where both alienation and intimate partner violence claims are made reveals troubling patterns in...

Familial citizenship and familial violence - Review symposium of Daphna Hacker , Legalized Families in the Era of Bordered Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, 385 pp. ISBN: 978-1-107-14499-6 Hardback) Guest Edited by Susan B. Boyd , Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia - Volume 15 Special Issue - Sus...

This article offers a review of shifts in feminist legal theory since the early 1990s. We first use our respective histories and fields of expertise to provide a brief overview and highlight some key themes within feminist legal theory. We then examine Social & Legal Studies (SLS), asking whether it has met its key goal of integrating feminist anal...

The division between private/public spheres is key to Western knowledge and the liberal tradition. Critical analysis has exposed the division as ideological and as linked to power relations. The public sphere is constructed as the legitimate realm of powerful groups and reflects the hegemony of heterosexuality. The private sphere has been gendered...

Since the end of the Second World War, increasing numbers of women have decided to become mothers without intending the biological father or a partner to participate in parenting. Many conceive via donor insemination or adopt; others become pregnant after a brief sexual relationship and decide to parent alone. Using a feminist socio-legal framework...

Over time, provincial legislation in Canada modified the common law position on the “illegitimacy” of children born outside marriage. They first imposed liability on parents for the support of illegitimate children. Second, they provided for the legitimation of children whose parents subsequently married. Finally, they abolished the concept of ille...

This chapter uses laws on parenthood to study the contradiction between the trend towards formal equality and ongoing gendered patterns of care, as well as the growing phenomenon of parenting by lesbians and by gay men and by single mothers by choice, by which a woman plans to be a child’s sole parent. Specifically, it assesses the innovative poten...

This article introduces and critically examines the new British Columbia (Canada) Family Law Act (FLA), which lays out new norms and procedures for the resolution of family disputes and emphasizes out-of-court dispute resolution. These changes are also intended both to reflect and to construct the 'new' face of contemporary motherhood and fatherhoo...

This article reviews the jurisprudence that emerged during the first year of the new family law statute in British Columbia, Canada. The Family Law Act came into force in March 2013 and represented a major overhaul of family law in that province. The goal was to reflect social change, to place children first, and to keep families safe. The language...

Literature on same-sex marriage has proliferated over the past several years, offering a variety of perspectives ranging from those linking the achievement of equality of lesbians and gay men to marriage rights, to suggestions that marriage itself will be transformed by the inclusion of same-sex partners, to arguments that same-sex marriage offers...

This chapter explores the limits that shared-parenting norms can place on women's autonomy over life decisions for themselves and for their children. In particular, it identifies the tensions between women's autonomy and modern expectations of mother-caregivers who do not live with the fathers of their children. While the focus on opposite-sex pare...

This article traces the history of relocation law in Canada and assesses the merits of law reform proposals on relocation in one Canadian province, British Columbia. These law reforms would introduce burdens of proof for relocation applications, marking a departure from the Canadian trend. Based on the key Supreme Court of Canada decision on reloca...

This chapter suggests that social biases influencing the application of the best interests test can produce decisions that miss the relevance of key factors in children’s lives. The authors undertake the problem of assessing just how the “best interests of the child” doctrine is operationalized, first in relation to the highly gendered history of c...

This article explores the tensions between autonomy and expectations of mother-caregivers, in the context of normative trends in post-separation parenting law. Going back to first principles of feminism, the article asks what scope for autonomy there is for modern mothers in the face of socio-legal norms that prioritise shared parenting. The very r...

This paper examines the treatment of joint custody in the British Columbia Court of Appeal from 1996 through 2008, comparing to the “cautious” approach taken by the Ontario Court of Appeal. The B.C. Court of Appeal has taken a strong stance against the use of presumptions, either for or against joint custody. However, in a society and a legal syste...

Normally, on an 8:00 p.m. flight from Montreal to Vancouver, I would read a novel or indulge in a video, after a brief, ultimately futile, effort to do some work. Not this time, since the work foray took the form of reading Fragmenting Fatherhood, by UK socio-legal scholars Richard Collier and Sally Sheldon.1 This book held my attention well beyond...

This paper studies the arguments and strategies deployed by fathers' and women's rights advocates in the field of child custody and access law reform in order to raise questions about the capacity of the concept of equality to encompass the complex socio-economic relations that frame and limit parenting patterns. The paper critically analyzes the w...

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The image of “backlash” is pervasive in contemporary debates about the impact of second-wave feminism on law and policy. But does it really explain the resistance to feminist initiatives for social change in contemporary culture? In this timely volume, contributors from various disciplines analyze reaction and resistance to feminism in several area...

Recent years have seen the retrenchment of Canadian social programs and the restructuring of the welfare state along neo-liberal lines. Social programs at both the federal and the provincial levels have been cut back, eliminated, or recast in exclusionary and punitive forms. Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship, and Legal Activism responds to these...

Recent legal developments in Canada have produced contradictory trends in relation to defining parenthood and determining parental rights and responsibilities. In some cases, the intention to parent appears to be given considerable weight. In others, bio-genetic ties prevail, or influence the extent to which intentionality will be recognized. This...

This chapter first briefly traces the events of the last decade that have challenged the legal definition of spouse. It then discusses concerns about marriage and familial ideology that have been raised, especially by feminists. Notably, feminists have asked whether allowing lesbians and gay men to marry actually challenges the hierarchical nature...

Over the last decade, legal recognition of same-sex relationships in Canada has accelerated. By and large, same-sex cohabitants are now recognised in the same manner as opposite-sex cohabitants, and same-sex marriage was legalised in 2005. Without diminishing the struggle that lesbians and gay men have endured to secure this somewhat revolutionary...

Until approximately the 1970s, Canadian law schools were primarily viewed as ‘trade schools’ whose main purpose was to provide a new generation of lawyers trained in a narrow way, without questioning the role of law or lawyers in relation to society and power. Further until the 1970s, few women, persons of colour, or Aboriginal people were admitted...

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This commentary responds to Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson's argument for the use of human rights discourse rather than a discourse of mental health when arguing for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Without disagreeing with their basic argument, I “problematize” it, showing that legal and human rights discourses also have a history of rein...

This article offers a retrospective analysis of feminist research on tax and family law and developments in these fields since the early 1980s. We identify the sometimes contradictory trends-both in legislation and in case law-that raise questions about the influence that feminist research has had on these areas of law. We then flag some ongoing ch...

This article examines the images of feminism and women’s groups in family law reform debates, particularly in the 1998 presentations of fathers’ rights advocates and related participants in Canada’s public consultations on child custody and access. These images are placed in the context of an increasingly sophisticated “backlash” literature that cr...

This article questions the terms on which groups that have traditionally been treated as "other" in modern societies (e.g. lesbians and gay men) are eventually included into the dominant system. It also reveals why the terms of this inclusion may result in the diminishing of the radical potential of the "othered" group in relation to social transfo...

Reform of child custody law has been a controversial topic in Canada since the mid-1980s. This refereed book argues that debates over child custody issues are rooted in gender-based dynamics within the family and society. Boyd examines how custody law has evolved over the past two centuries, with a focus on the relationship between the law and gend...

The author explores feminist frameworks within which questions of family, law and sexuality can best be explored, drawing on recent efforts to (re)establish materialist feminist theory. She suggests that in order to make the important link between questions of gender, sexuality, difference, desire, identity and subjectivity on the one hand, and pro...

Western thought has long been characterized by an ideological divide between public and private spheres. In the industrial era, the divide became highly gendered as men dominated the public spheres of politics and work, while women were closely associated with family and home. In the late twentieth century, social and legal policies have promoted e...

The concept of the ideology of motherhood is crucial to much early feminist work on child custody law. This ideology of motherhood consisted of a set of “common-sense” expectations, described by the author. The ideology of motherhood assisted in understanding why a field where women (since the death of paternal custody) appeared to “succeed” -- sta...

In this article I argue that an analysis of "the State" is necessary in order to understand legal developments related to "family" that are relevant to efforts to combat the oppression of heterosexual women, as well as of lesbians and gay men. Drawing on recent debates concerning postmodernism and feminist theory, I review efforts to reconceptualiz...

The legal system produces and reproduces ideologies that reinforce the oppression of women. Two such ideologies are the ideology of motherhood and the ideology of equality. Modern child custody law, with its gender neutral focus on the best interests of the child, illustrates how these ideologies influence judges and how judges, in turn, reproduce...

This paper provides an overview of Canadian feminist literature on law, starting with a brief chronology of the development of the scholarship from the time of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970). The authors break the literature down into the five substantive areas most often written about: criminal law, family law, in...

This paper provides an overview of Canadian feminist literature on law, starting with a brief chronology of the development of the scholarship from the time of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970). The authors break the literature down into the five substantive areas most often written about: criminal law, family law, in...

The author raises questions about how postmodernist work relates to her analysis of child custody law, which has been informed by socialist feminist theories of law, state and family. She has explored how ideologies such as the ideology of motherhood and the liberal ideology of equality have, at different historical moments, operated separately and...

During the late 1970s and the 1980s, when Justice Bertha Wilson sat on the Ontario Court of Appeal and on the Supreme Court of Canada, family law emerged as a field of public concern, and the contours of child custody and access law became increasingly contested. This chapter reflects upon Justice Wilson's decisions regarding this legal matter, sit...

Women now make up at least 50 percent of students in the entry classes in most Canadian law schools. In some law schools women constitute about 50 percent of the tenured or tenure stream professoriate – a marked change from the early 1990s. This feminization of legal education is not the result of affirmative action but rather the increased accepta...

In July 2010, the British Columbia Ministry of the Attorney-General released a White Paper proposing major family law changes, including to child custody law. The concepts of “custody” and “access” would be eliminated and replaced with “guardianship” and “parenting time”. Separating parents would both be defined as guardians and would be able to ex...

This article looks at the outcomes of recent custody law reform inquiries in Canada and Australia, and examines the ways in which the reform processes in each country dealt with the claims of the various stakeholders and the emerging empirical research on post-separation parenting. Although the outcomes of the two processes were significantly diffe...

This co-edited volume highlights important classic and contemporary works by law and society scholars who analyze the complex and often highly political relationship between law and families. Featuring authors from Australia, Canada, England and the United States, the volume looks at how socio-legal scholars think about families and the law, how la...

This paper explores the tensions between autonomy and expectations of mother-caregivers, in the context of trends in child custody law. Do mothers have appropriate scope for autonomy in the face of socio-legal norms that prioritize shared parenting? Feminism has been centrally concerned with freeing women to shape their own lives, rather than accep...

Insolvency law and family law in Canada are both aimed at important public policy goals. The Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act allows the financially distressed to shed their debts and have a fresh start at earning income, while also ensuring an effective and organized debt collection mechanism for affected creditors. Family law is aimed at the equitab...

This article examines resistance to law reform initiatives in the field of child support and child custody and access law by those who say that special rights are being given to women and that the “family” and fathers are under threat. Specifically we consider whether legislative reforms in these areas have been inappropriately influenced by femini...

Drawing on relevant literature on care and autonomy, this chapter suggests that despite innovative feminist work that seeks to re-examine care by setting aside its roots in the (hetero)sexual division of labour and women’s work, in the field of post-separation parenting law at least, feminists ignore the gendered nature of care at their peril. The...