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Reviews
Reviews
Fascinating in every particular... One of the most important aspects of Contested Paternity is the way in which Fuchs uses the history of paternity suits as a way to analyze changing attitudes towards fatherhood, motherhood, and childhood.
A compelling study that examines the epochal shift in French fatherhood over the past two centuries.
Accessible and of interest to readers from a variety of disciplines and interdisciplinary junctures.
Through her comprehensive study of paternity suits and the impact of banning them from 1804 and 1812, Rachel Fuchs has produced a tour de force on the history of family law in France from the eighteenth century to modern times.
[Fuchs] effectively links battles over paternity and parental responsibility to wider political developments... highly recommended.
Fuchs's treatment of the theme of constructions of paternity is stimulating, clear and yet highly refined... With her considerable methodological expertise as a social historian of France, she weaves an exceedingly colourful picture of disputes around paternity.
The cases that Fuchs presents are fascinating.
This book's scope and framework make it a significant addition to the history of families in modern France.
Fuch's book provides us with an excellent guide to understanding how these legal notions originated and how they have evolved in modern French history.
In this splendid study, Rachel Fuchs takes an entirely new angle on gender history... On completing the book, all historians will say as I did, 'I wish I'd thought of that.' Fuchs not only thought of it; she did it and did it very well indeed.
Has taken a difficult and neglected subject and opened up its many complexities in a way in which no other work I can think of comes close.
This is a wonderful book, which balances aspects of social, cultural, legal, and gender history. One of its many strengths is Fuchs's ability to combine vivid individual stories with broad analysis. She has carefully sampled judicial archives and the legal press to unearth the concerns and struggles of particular women and men. But she also gives a compelling story of changes in both ideas and laws over the sweep of two centuries. She demonstrates convincingly that the seemingly small question of recherche de paternite can illuminate fundamental social and cultural transformations.
A wonderful book.
Contested Paternity is an excellent book, which should be included in the library of anyone who works on gender, family, economy, law or modern France.
A masterpiece in French social, cultural, and gender history. A sweeping account of a crucial but neglected subject, Contested Paternity gets to the heart of the issues that dominate modern French history—above all the tension between a revolutionary and a counterrevolutionary political culture and the long transition from a culture organized around the patriarchal family to one organized around the ungendered individual.
In this richly-documented study, Rachel Fuchs opens up a new window into the history of families by perceptively examining the legal and customary ways that paternity was negotiated in French society from the old regime to the present. This angle of approach yields extraordinary insights into the evolution of fatherhood, women’s changing legal status, and children’s rights and shows us convincingly how the family changed from a biological unit which admitted no outsiders, to a fluid, social institution that effectively satisfies the needs of all its members, no matter what their blood relationships. The way this development unfolded in both custom and law is told here with clarity, scrupulous attention to detail, and often dramatically pertinent illustrations drawn from, correspondence, trials, and landmark jurisprudence.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6.125
x 9.25
Pages
368
ISBN
9780801898334
Illustration Description
14 b&w photos
Table of 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
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
Resources
