Contested Paternity

Constructing Families in Modern France

Rachel G. Fuchs

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780801898167
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: History

Winner, 2009 J. Russell Major Prize, American Historical AssociationWinner, 2009 Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize, Western Association of Women HistoriansWinner, 2008 Charles E. Smith Award, European History section of the Southern Historical Association

This groundbreaking study examines complex notions of paternity and fatherhood in modern France through the lens of contested paternity. Drawing from archival judicial records on paternity suits, paternity denials, deprivation of paternity, and adoption, from the end of the eighteenth century through the twentieth, Rachel G. Fuchs reveals how paternity was defined and how it functioned in the culture and experiences of individual men and women. She addresses the competing definitions of paternity and of families, how public policy toward paternity and the family shifted, and what individuals did to facilitate their personal and familial ideals and goals.

Issues of paternity and the family have broad implications for an understanding of how private acts were governed by laws of the state. Focusing on paternity as a category of family history, Contested Paternity emphasizes the importance of fatherhood, the family, and the law within the greater context of changing attitudes toward parental responsibility.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Families and the Social Order from the Old Regime to the Civil Code
• 2 Seduction and Courtroom Encounters in the Nineteenth Century
• 3 Find the Fathers, Save the Children, 1870–1912
• 4 Courts Attribute Paternity, 1912–1940
• 5 Families Dismantled and Reconstituted, 1880–1940
• 6 Paternity and the Family, 1940 to the Present
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index