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Shared parenting, law and policy: considering power within the framework of autopoietic theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2015

Annika Newnham
Annika Newnham*
Affiliation:
Lecturer, University of Reading, School of Law. Email: [email protected]
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper uses the last few decades’ developments in the area of shared parenting to explore power within the framework of autopoietic theory. It traces how, prompted by turbulence from the political subsystem, family law has made several unsuccessful attempts to solve the perceived problem of post-separation dual-household parenting. It agrees with Luhmann and Teubner that closed autopoietic systems’ developments are limited by their normative and cognitive frameworks, and also argues that changes which have occurred in family law show that closed social systems do not function in total isolation. It considers power as ego's ability to limit alter's choices. In our functionally differentiated society, with its recent proliferation of communication, power appears more diffuse and impossible to plot into causal one-way relationships.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 11 , Issue 4: Critical Socio-legal Engagements with Systems Thinking , December 2015 , pp. 426 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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