The author proposes a paradigmatic approach to the construction of fatherless, abandoned, and/or motherless children as social issues needing some policy responses: within the different historical Western configurations of the repertoire of potential responses, major organizing paradigms draw the line between those responses that are rejected as belonging to the supreme evil sphere and others that can be considered as lesser evils. Within the framework of a paradigm, dilemmas exist and debates go on as to which lesser evils should be preferred and how the policies should be implemented. Policies deriving from different paradigms give rise to intractable controversies since the disagreements concern not only the means but also the ends. Four paradigms can be extracted from the historical data with regard to illegitimacy and single motherhood: Christian angelism, Malthusian angelism, healthy citizenship, and proper citizenship.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), 106.
2.
Nadine Lefaucheur, "Qui doit nourrir l'enfant de parents non mariés ou démariés?" and "La société française et le traitement des naissances hors mariage: de l'angélisme au patriotisme," in Qui doit nourrir l'enfant dont le père est "absent"? Rapport de recherche sur les fondements des politiques familiales européennes (Angleterre, France, Italie, Portugal), eds. Nadine Lefaucheur and Claude Martin, research report for CNAF (Caisse nationale d'allocations familiales) (Paris, 1995) (with, for England, Jane Lewis, Mavis Maclean, Jane Millar, and Martine Spensky; for France, Christiane Bonnemain, Nadine Lefaucheur, and Claude Martin; for Italy, Alisa del Re; for Portugal, Pierre Guibentif), 9-44, 125-43.
3.
Peter A. Hall, "Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain," Comparative Politics (1993): 275-96.
4.
Donald A. Schön and Martin Rein, Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
5.
Thomas S.Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ( Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1970 ).
6.
Véronique Demars-Sion, Femmes séduites et abandonnées au 18° siècle. L'exemple du Cambrésis (Lille: L'Espace juridique, 1991).
7.
Abbé A.-H.Gaillard, Recherches administratives, statistiques et morales sur les enfants trouvés, les enfants naturels et les orphelins en France et dans plusieurs autres pays d'Europe (Paris: Th. Leclerc, 1837), 353.
8.
O Vianense, September 24, 1864. Quoted by Caroline B. Bretell and Rui Feijo, "Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century Northwestern Portugal," in Ecole française de Rome, Enfance abandonnée et société en Europe XIV°-XX° siècle ( Rome: Palazzo Farnese, Collection de l'école française de Rome, 1991), 289.
9.
David I.Kertzer, Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control (Boston: Beacon, 1993).
10.
Cf. the Web page of the association Sternipark about its creation of the "Kinderklappe" and Adam Pertman, "Politicians Push for Legalized Baby Abandonment at `Safe Sites': Critics Decry Initiatives' Merits, Effectiveness," Globe Staff, April 2000. (With thanks to Michaël Hereth, from Hamburg, and Martin Rein, from Boston, who gave me this information.)
11.
Cf., for example, Myriam Greilsammer, L'envers du tableau. Mariage et maternité en Flandre médiévale (Paris: Armand Colin, 1990); Paul Slack, Poverty & Policy in Tudor & Stuart England (London: Longman, 1988); M. A. Crowther, The Workhouse System, 1834-1929: The History of an English Social Institution (Cambridge, UK: Methuen, 1983).
12.
U.R.Q. Henriques , "Bastardy and the New Poor Law," Past and Present (1967): 103-29.
13.
In French, I usually call this paradigm patriotique nataliste (and the next and last one patriotique familiste).
14.
Nadine Lefaucheur, "Dissociation familiale et délinquance juvénile-ou la trompeuse éloquence des chiffres," in Protéger l'enfant. Raison juridique et pratiques socio-judiciaires (XIX°-XX° siècles), eds. Michel Chauvière, Pierre Lenoël, and Eric Pierre (Rennes: Presses Universitaires, 1996), 123-33.
15.
See the preparatory documents for the French Civil Code of 1804 (Naissance du Code Civil, an VIII-an XII-1800-1804 [Paris: Flammarion, 1989]): "It is a misfortune for a State to have citizens that do not belong to any family" (Réal, 250); "It is through the small fatherland, that is the family, that one becomes attached to the large one; it is good fathers, good husbands, good sons that make good citizens" (Preliminary speech by Portalis, Tronchet, Bigot-Préameneu, and Maleville, 1° Pluviôse an IX, 90).
16.
There was no tour in Paris before 1827. No children were abandoned in tours until 1835, when six children were found in a baby-box; their number grew regularly up to 551 in 1840 and 776 in 1845.
17.
Lefaucheur, "Accouchement sous X et mères de l'ombre," in La pluriparentalité, eds. Didier Le Gall and Yamina Bettahar (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001), 139-75.
18.
The great reformer of mother and child welfare under the Third Republic, Paul Strauss, called it "the depopulation machine." Strauss, L'Enfance malheureuse (Paris: Charpentier, 1896), 41.
19.
The expression accouchement sous X is a customary one that does not appear in the legal texts; they use the expressions secret de l'admission (in the hospital), secret de l'accouchement, and/or secret de l'identité.
20.
Lefaucheur, "L'accouchement `sous X': une `tradition française'?" French Politics, Culture and Society (1999): 153-64.
21.
The exact title of this law (no. 93-22 of January 8, 1993) is "about various modifications in civil status, family laws and children's rights."
22.
Irène Théry , Le démariage: justice et vie privée (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1993).
23.
Therefore, the main policy issues regarding mothers who were never married or are no longer married to the fathers are not so much whether and how to oblige the putative fathers to marry the mothers and/or support the fatherless children. Instead, the main issues are how the obligation of fathers and mothers to support their children has to be redefined after a separation or a divorce, how this obligation can be enforced, and whether and how the rights and duties of the stepparents can be defined in relation to those of parents. Nevertheless, it appears that the same paradigms that were applicable to fatherless children and unmarried mothers can, in a slightly reframed way, also construct social issues and policies concerning "demarried" (lone) parents and children with two separated parents (whether formerly married or not)-not the least reason being that unmarried motherhood is often used as a metonym of lone motherhood, which is also generally used itself as a metonym of lone parenthood. In times of demarriage, Christian angelism is reframed as an "anti-demarriage" paradigm: demarriage itself enters into the sphere of supreme evil, where it takes its place alongside sex and procreation outside marriage, contraception, abortion, and infanticide; as a consequence, all the policies and rules that can be seen as incentives to divorce or cohabitate also enter the sphere of supreme evil. Malthusian angelism becomes reframed as an "anti-dependency" paradigm: the unmarried people who become parents without having the means or the will to support the children and who lay the burden of these children on society are now joined in the sphere of supreme evil by parents who have decided to separate or divorce, even though they are unable to support the lone-parent household by themselves, and by the "absent" parents who have remarried or repartnered, thus taking on new responsibilities for stepchildren and/or new children of their own without being able to afford the expenses of two households. The healthy citizen paradigm now becomes an "antipoverty/inequality" paradigm: since infant mortality is not much of an issue anymore, the main concern within the framework of the healthy citizen paradigm has moved from the saving of babies to the higher risks of poverty of the households headed by lone parents, especially by lone mothers. The supreme evil sphere of this paradigm now consists of the strain on human resources that stems from the social inequalities between children according to their family situation, as well as of the handicaps and inequalities that children and parents, especially mothers, living in such households face (e.g., health and education). The proper citizen paradigm undergoes only little change. Since it is crucially concerned with the risks of personality disorders and antisocial behavior stemming not only from the absence of a father but also from the absence of the father, the current speeding up of demarriage has not necessitated any great changes in it. And since there is no agreement within the paradigm about what are the worse or the lesser evils-the death of the father, the absence of a father, the absence of a/the (step)father within the household, the absence of relationships with the father, the bad relationships with the father, or even the presence of a bad (step)father within the household-it has no clear answer as to whether policy should distinguish between the different types of lone mothers' households. 24. As the child psychiatrist Fernand Davos has remarked, "Reforming the law on accouchement sous X would be really dangerous. . . . Suppressing the secrecy of origins would be dangerous for children (born `under X'). Reality is unfortunately more sordid (than their `family romance'). Even when abandonment does not ensue from incest, it is inevitably the outcome of a set of insufficiencies; in money, family and education, of course, but also in intelligence and affectivity. Meeting this truth is far more painful than the persistence of doubt." "La vérité, plus dure que le secret," Libération, May 26, 2000.
24.
Christine Boutin, Les larmes de la République (Paris: Plon, 1999), 156-57.
25.
Nowadays, feminist or legalistic partisans of accouchement sous X usually borrow a large part of their arguments from the work of Catherine Bonnet, a child psychiatrist who has associated accouchement sous X with the prevention of infanticide: according to this author, who was very influential at the time of the parliamentary debates that led to the introduction of accouchement sous X into the Civil Code in 1993, women who give birth anonymously are traumatized women who have suffered from child abuse, deny their pregnancy, feel the impulse to abuse or even kill the infant, and try to protect it by abandoning it anonymously and forever. Geste d'amour, l'accouchement sous X (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1990).
26.
Cf. Valérie Boblet, a member of the French Movement for Family Planning, an organization that is strongly involved in abortion counseling: creating a Conservatory of Origins would be "dangerous, because it would be a terrible hardship for a woman, living all her lifelong with this sword of Damocles over her head, knowing that some day she will have to account for [her conduct]. And overall, maybe, having to say no a second time." Le Monde, November 9, 2000.
27.
Pierre Legendre , Le dossier occidental de la parenté, l'inestimable objet de la transmission (Paris: Fayard, 1985).
28.
A citation from the lawyer Evelyne Pisier. Cf. also the philosopher François Dagognet: "We firmly insist on recognizing the right to give birth anonymously; and we pay the price for that, since, as a consequence, we deprive the child of all knowledge of its origins.... Here are our reasons: the family should not be enslaved to the laws of the blood" (Libération, November 13-14, 1999). Or, about insemination with donor: "We approve of this silence on the past, so much the spiritual paternity prevails, from our point of view, over the biological one, up to the point of drawing a veil over it.... We refuse to be bound, hand and foot, to the dogma of the past, and prefer the [relative] lie that helps living to the reality that kills. . . . We do not really advocate lying, but ask to forget, [for] the child does not exist in itself, but only through the family that welcomes it (Une nouvelle morale. Famille, travail, nation [Paris: Institut Synthélabo, Les empêcheurs de penser en rond, 1998], 86, 90). See also Hubert Brin, the president of the official "parliament of families," the National Union of Family Associations: "This freedom of giving birth `under X' has to continue. . . . It is a matter of strategy. Abolishing it would encourage the advocates of biological truth to question other rules, from the presumption of paternity to full adoption and the anonymity of sperm donors" (Le Monde, October 2, 1999).
29.
Axel Kahn, Et l'homme dans tout ça? Plaidoyer pour un humanisme moderne (Paris: Nil, 2000). Actually, as far as I know, the only proponent of droit aux origines who really advocates a genetical definition of filiation is sociologist Evelyne Sullerot, one of the founder members of Mouvement français pour le Planning familial, which champions fathers' rights and thinks that paternity has to be founded on new bases and that the only way to do so is to found it on genetical truth. Quels pères? Quels fils? (Paris: Fayard, 1992).
30.
According to their identity papers, adopted children are "born of" their adoptive parents; one of the demands of the movement for a droit aux origines is to replace this expression with a new one: "son/daughter of" the adoptive parents.
31.
January 2001.
32.
For example, the sociologist Irène Théry, in a report ordered by the Ministries of Justice and of Employment and Solidarity: Couple, filiation et parenté aujourd'hui: le droit face aux mutations de la famille et de la vie privée (Paris: Odile Jacob & Documentation française, 1998), or the parliamentary inquiry into children's rights, held by the National Assembly under the direction of former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and Deputy Jean-Paul Bret: Droits de l'enfant, de nouveaux espaces à conquérir, Assemblée nationale, commission d'enquête sur les droits de l'enfant, rapport n° 871, 1998.
33.
This law (no. 2002-93) passed on January 22, 2002.
