March 2025 Global Roundup

Recent Family related news included: a push in England to better support children of divorce; a directive by some private employers in China to require unmarried workers to marry and have children; a realization in the Netherlands that their laws do not properly support same sex couples with children; and a poignant divorce drama coming from Spain. Also headlining the family news, the United States is grappling with the issue of arming domestic violence offenders.

Chinese Company to Single Workers: Get Married or Get Out

Vivian Wang, The New York Times, March 4, 2025

Besides the economic cost of having children, many young Chinese people reject the traditional idea that their families should direct their lives, and they cite a desire for personal autonomy. As a result, China’s government worries about the falling birthrate and some private employers have ordered workers to do their part – that is to have children for the good of the country.

Courts Failing Children of Divorcees, Says Lawyer

Debbie Tubby & Andy Trigg, BBC News - East of England, March 14, 2025

Research by the University of West London suggested about 40% of divorcees, or parents who were separated, said their ex-partner had demonstrated "parental alienating behaviors.” Researchers said children affected by such behaviors were found to have greater signs of "serious mental stress.” Janis James, the chief executive of Good Egg Safety which funded the University of West London's research, described the mental health impact of alienating behaviors as “endemic.”

How Many Legal Parents Can a Child Have? The Dutch are Asking the Question

Mark Smith, The Guardian, March 17 2025

There are many rainbow families in the Netherlands, where parents (often, a gay male couple and a single woman, or a lesbian couple) choose to have and raise children in constellations of more than two adults. The Dutch have a proud history of championing gay rights – in 2001 Amsterdam’s then-mayor presided over the world’s first same-sex marriages – and gay families have long been embraced there. Yet, from a legal point of view, these families are unseen and, consequently, disadvantaged.

Understanding Guns and Domestic Violence

Patricia Fersch, Forbes, March 18, 2025

Every month an average of seventy women are shot and killed by an intimate partner in the United States. Access to firearms radically increases lethality risk in situations of domestic abuse. The current policy of reviewing cases regarding an abuser’s right to own guns, is on a case by case basis where the Department of Justice uses care and attention to detail in evaluating cases. This is in jeopardy due to a push to make the decision automated.

Shared Custody Is a Prickly Spanish Divorce Drama

Margaret Lyons,The New York Times, March 20, 2025

The reviewer gave this new series a positive review and commented that Custody is: “not dark or brutalizing, but neither does it shy away from how quickly Cris and Diego can take a whisper of disagreement and turn it into an opera of 'you are in fact just like your parents, specifically in the ways you most fear and resent.'