This unit will examine past and current sociological theories and deconstructions of families and family lives. It will equip students with the necessary tools to critically examine the range and complexity of intimate relationships that are currently experienced as 'families' in the Anglophone West. Equipped with these tools, students will be able to range across a number of substantive issues: fatherhood, fertility and technology; children and childhood; popular stereotypes of 'the family'; 'fur children'; same sex parenting; aging and intimacy; kinship and intimacy; family violence.