The Spatial Family, Summarising The Family of the City, The Family of the Country
November 27, 2024
[Editor’s note: This is the first of four blog posts from a mini-symposium on Shelly Kreiczer-Levy’s and Baoshi Wang’s article “The Family of the City, the Family of the Country“, The American Journal of Comparative Law, Volume 71, Issue 2, Summer 2023, Pages 328–353.]
Baoshi Wang and I met when we were both visiting The Vulnerability and Human Condition Initiative at Emory as visiting scholars under the guidance and supervision of Prof. Martha Fineman. We were talking about our home country, lives, families, and local laws as we came across a mutual interest: family law and care. I asked Baoshi about a new law that was passed in China at the time and made headlines in the news. According to the law, it is the duty of adult children to visit, care and respect their elderly parents, and a failure to meet this duty can result in criminal sanctions. I was both puzzled and intrigued by the law, as a scholar who has devoted time and thought to intergenerational relations in the context of inheritance law and multigenerational cohabitation. I was puzzled because in Western jurisdictions intergenerational commitments are for the most part considered moral duties, rather than legally binding obligations.
Baoshi explained the background of this law, having its roots in a rapid urbanization process, designed and supported by state. He also explained the gaps in social security between urban and rural areas, making rural elders reliant on their children for care and support. Urbanization and social security gaps were state policy that had unintended consequences. As young people move to the city to find their livelihood, it became harder for them to visit and care for their parents. The obligation to visit one’s parent came to fix the fragmentation of the multigenerational household. Our conversation made me think about how care in the family can be dependent on spatial categories. Where you live matters for the purpose of your familial duties. I told Baoshi about an example from Israel. Family farms on state owned land are subject to a complex inheritance law regime that mandates only one heir can inherit the farm. The chosen heir is considered “the continuing son/daughter” and is customarily assigned with a duty to care for their parents in their old age. Inheritance rules thus create a divide between care expectations and practices in the city, where care is shared among all children, and care in family farms, where care is the duty of only one child.
Thinking of these two very different cases together revealed the importance of state involvement in shaping familial commitments that differ across spatial lines. The state, we argue “constitutes and supports different familial practices in urban and rural areas.”
In the two examples of our home countries, we identify differential treatment by state laws and policies that distinguish between rural and urban areas, resulting in a family for the city and a family for the country. This gap in care practices is not necessarily planned or desired by the state, but can be an unexpected, indirect consequence of its policies or rules.
The differing practices are not always the result of differential treatment. In our third case study, we discuss abortion law in the US (the article was written before Dobbs). In the 2010s, TRAP (targeted regulations of abortion providers) laws were enacted to require providers to have admitting privileges at hospitals nearby. In addition, providers must meet the requirements of an ambulatory surgical center. These laws caused many abortion centers to close. Although the laws were enforced in both rural and urban areas, they had a disproportionate effect on women living in rural areas. The case thus serves as an example of what we call “spatially blind” policies and laws. Unlike differential treatment laws and policies, spatially blind laws “are similarly applied in different geographical areas” but “ignore gaps in access to medical or social services.” The result is different practices of care in the family.
The article continues with an analysis of state actions that react to the differing practices of care with an attempt to rectify the gaps resulted by its policies. In China, it was the duty to visit, care and respect one’s elderly parents. In Israel, it was a moderate amendment to the law. In both the Chinese and Israeli case, these gaps in care were an unintended result, a byproduct of the state oversight of the potential outcome of its policies. The article can therefore serve to alert states to this potential implication of spatial policies.
Even though the article started with a conversation about the practices of care in our respective countries, it did not end there. The laws and policies depicted in the three case studies are not necessarily unique, one may find other stories that support the same conclusion. We use these cases in a bottom-up approach to analyze various forms of state involvement that lead to a bifurcation of practices of care across geographical categories. Our goal was to contribute to the developing notion of the spatial family. The idea started under guidance of Martha Fineman, and we are grateful for her inspiring work, and in particular her work on the role of the state in shaping the practices of care.