Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France

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In Paris during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the practice of adopting children was strongly discouraged by cultural, religious, and legal authorities on the grounds that it disrupted family blood lines. In fact, historians have assumed that adoption had generally not been practiced in France or in the rest of Europe since late antiquity

Reviews

"Gager has written an interesting and informative book about family life in early modern France... This excellent book shows how effectively legal archives can be mined to illustrate a dimension of social experience not readily apparent in isolated and uncontextualized legal codes. The book also explores some of the motives that defined the aspirations and realities of family life in premodern France. Gager has, in my opinion, written an invaluable book."--Sixteenth Century Journal