Compared to a few generations ago, our intimate relationships involve more personal choices about our partners and sexual behaviour. By examining relationships and families in Canada within a global context, this book aims to understand how relationships and family practices have changed in western industrialized countries.

This book aims to understand how relationships and family practices have changed over the past decades in western industrialized countries, and to differentiate between actual changes and the misconceptions voiced in political speeches or perpetuated in the media. Discussions of social research will reveal that our personal choices about intimate partners, having children, dissolving relationships, and maintaining contact with parents and siblings are influenced by our family and cultural upbringing, our socioeconomic circumstances, the social policy environment, and political and economic events in the larger society. This means that the nature of family and personal life is always changing although some aspects remain remarkably stable. By examining relationships and families in Canada within a global context, we are better able to understand the diverse factors that influence personal choices about love, sex and marriage.