This unique contribution to comparative family law brings together dedicated essays on a comprehensive range of issues in family law in the United States and England showing how they stand at the beginning of the new century and how they reached there. This provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine how family law has reacted to a period of change in family life widely held to be without precedent. The legal analyses are set within critical accounts of wider social and family policy and against a fully explored demographic background provided by leading scholars in these areas. Readers will be challenged to understand the nature of family law and its possible future direction.