Reflexos jurídicos do processo de secularização da família contemporânea ocidental

Abstract

Starting with the notion of contemporary family as a primary human social unit consisting of a complete social relationship among its members, and as space of entanglement between the private and the public, this research aims to identify the impacts on it by the secularization as a cultural process phenomenon corresponding to an uprooting, related to a laicization process as a political circumstance, among which the pluralization of the family forms revealed in the social legitimation of new modes about being family that use as reference — to be either reinforced of fought against — a latent structure based on the father-mother-child triad in which love is the generalized, symbolic means of exchange, somehow combining the four components or elements, namely gift, reciprocity generativity and sexuality, and the dignity of the human being as indeed a higher value and a founding principle the ensures free development of individuals. As a secondary endpoint, this work investigates the effect of such phenomena on the legal framework, notably whether the intention of value from politically active minorities impinging on the above base constitute power that interferes on the law-making process to the extent that they are turned into legal norms. The third endpoint is to identify among the pluralization of the family forms if there is anyone which is most likely to be successful and long-lasting regarding itself and its members.