In a single family, parents and children may come from many different places, and the grandparents often seem to be in search of a role to play, aspiring to new functions. In most cases, the new, medically assisted forms of procreation presuppose filiation with non-biological links. But the children, closely tied to parental intimacy, are more tightly bound than ever to the family and remain trapped in its oppressive chains.

The contemporary family is in a state of flux and seeks to reinvent itself. There are reconstituted and deconstructed families, there are families with same-sex parents and those with a single parent: but does this multiplicity of possibilities mean that the family is more open to the outside world than in the past — or that it has closed in upon itself? Should we rejoice at the abundance of new family structures — or, on the contrary, worry about upsetting traditional guidelines, with the resulting changes in the parenting process?

Physicians, sociologists, writers, legal experts, gynaecologist-obstetricians, anthropologists and psychologists analyze the fascinating evolution in the status of the family and some of the effects of that evolution.

This volume includes all the contributions to the colloquium of 7th and 9th December 2007, held at the Medical Faculty of Paris.

René Frydman, a gynaecologist-obstetrician, is the head of Maternity at Hôpital Antoine-Béclère, in Clamart, a Paris suburb.

Muriel Flis-Trèves is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Frydman and Trèves are the authors of Rêves de femmes (2005) and A quoi rêve les hommes? (2006).

Contributors to this volume: M. Aisenstein, J.P. Carminati, F. Clément-Neyrand, G. Delaisi de Parseval, P. Denis, M. Desplechin, C. Eliacheff, L. Ferry, S. Giampino, P. Guyomard, S. Hefez, C. Honoré, N. Kuperman, W. Lowenstein, C. Mecary, S. Missonnier, F. Mitterrand, M.R. Moro, M. Segalen, F. de Singly, C. Thomson, S. Tisseron, F. Zonabend.