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The aim of this article is to reread The Polish Peasant in Europe and America as a representation of the fears and modernisation fantasies of its era. I analyse the patterns of gendered family relations and ideals of femininity and masculinity constructed by Thomas and Znaniecki within the framework of rural–urban discourses. As I will show, in The Polish Peasant we find huge contradictions between the liberal and conservative perspectives presented. On the one hand, the authors introduce the concept of "organisation – disorganisation – reorganisation," which is supposed to be scientific and thus non-ideological. On the other hand, the authors' patterns of interpreting empirical data show numerous gender bias and patriarchal schemes. As a result the authors create an opposition in which whatever is rural is the cradle of authenticity, of naturalised national and gendered family values, and whatever is urban is dangerous and demoralising due to escaping the former strong rural social control. In The Polish Peasant the authors thereby construct the "morally healthy" model of a national and patriarchal rural community of families untouched by individualisation and women's emancipation. Such a model had a patriarchal division of gender roles within a religiously devout, strong (meaning indissoluble), multi-generational family. In The Polish Peasant we can find both a nostalgia – which was typical of its era – for a "pre-modern," rural, conservative civilisation, and worry about the moral health of women in the urban world. However it is an ambivalent nostalgia accompanied by a conviction of the inevitability of social change.

An analysis of the biography of Natalia, a former resident of a Polish children's home who, at the age of thirteen, voluntarily left her biological, dysfunctional family, aims to address a question which is fundamental, but rarely asked by the sociologists of family. Is it possible to completely quit a relation with one's family of origin? What identity and biographical consequences does such a decision imply? This article consists of two parts. In the first, theoretical one, I argue that the process of quitting one's family is a liminal, unstructured status passage, especially, for two categories of actors – adolescents and mothers who decide to pass taking care of children to fathers. I take into account the cultural and institutional basis of the liminal character of their experience. I also explain why, in order to comprehend those difficult instances, I propose using the metaphor of apostasy. The second, empirical part of the article, is devoted to studying the biographical and identity consequences and limitations of the process of apostasy. I analyze them on the basis of Natalia's autobiography, which provided inspiration for those reflections.

This article analyses the transnational parenting phenomenon in Poland and the moral panics — reaction to it as shown in both public discourses and actions of public institutions. Such features can be found while analysing discourses about "euro-orphans" (such a label is given to migrants' children) that have occupied public discourses since mid-2007 in Poland. Based on discourse analysis of about 500 press articles from 2007–2008, I argue that in spite of the growing influence of global mobility in contemporary family life, and economic migration as a family strategy of survival, various "moral entrepreneurs" such as leaders of NGOs, social workers, educational workers, therapists, scientists, etc. construe the features of transmigrant parents as deviants, and label the strategy of migration as an individual act of family abandonment and serious threat to the well-being of the nation, etc. This deviancy discourse pertains particularly to the trans-national strategy adopted by mothers whose gendered role is in the Polish culture strictly connected with the role of child-rearing and with nurturing the nation the "Mother Pole" icon). I argue that moral panics in reaction to contemporary family change and actions of public institutions serve the function of the re-traditionalisation of the family to the traditional functionalist model.

The article aims to address the complexity of the models of masculinity (re)produced in the transnational context and explain the role of religion in this process. It draws on qualitative research conducted among religiously committed Catholic male migrants from Poland who have settled in multicultural and secular societies: England, Belgium, and Sweden. The transnational context often makes it difficult for migrant men to practice hegemonic masculinity. Our analysis shows how the isomorphic mechanisms allow for (re)constructing new forms of masculinity that combine diverse and often contradictory meanings available in the transnational contexts (i.e., associated with subordinated masculinities or with femininity). Such hybridized version of masculinity not only helps to adapt to the new transnational context but also allows for rebuilding the privileges traditionally offered by hegemonic masculinity. We also discuss the role religion plays in this process by giving credibility to this hybrid masculinity by rooting it in the sacral order and thus legitimizing it.