Women,Adoption,and Family Life in Early Modern Paris

Abstract

This article examines a series of notarized contracts that describe adoptions of daughters and sons as heirs undertaken by "independent" women in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Paris. Despite concrete legal barriers against adoption, a general cultural rejection of adoptive kinship, and the centrality of a patriarchal model of the family, widows, separated women, unmarried women, and even a deserted wife turned to "adoptive reproduction" to continue their family lines. The adoptive mothers were childless and had all gained a degree of independent control over their property, which, in turn, allowed them to name an heir of their choice. The evidence of adoption enriches our portrait of relations between mothers and children, women's legal status, and the diversity offamily life in early modem France.