Lower-Class Families,Women,and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Argentina

Abstract

The concept of patria potestad, or the right of male heads of house holds to control family members, including their labor, has undergone a marked transformation in Argentina. In the colonial period patria potestad served to re inforce imperial codes related to inheritance, marriage, and race relations, but after independence and before new codes were passed, the weak Argentine nation rarely interfered in family matters except to conscript vagrant men or force poor women to work for the state. Gradually, economic conditions, along with the location of the work to be performed, replaced race as criteria for state inter ference in family labor. As the Argentine state became more powerful in the twentieth century it finally usurped the right of family heads to select occupations and to keep the incomes of family members.