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Fathers, Families, and the State in France, 1914–1945
Kristen Stromberg Childers (Author)
9780801441226
Hardback, published 24 October 2003
280 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.4 cm, 0.907 kg
Kristen Stromberg Childers complements existing work on the significance of gender in the creation and elaboration of welfare states by turning readers' attention from women to men, from mothers to fathers, and from argument over the meaning of maternity to arguments over the meaning of paternity.... Besides interesting modern French historians, the book should be useful for comparative historians of welfare, of war and peace, and of the reality and representation of men's and women's lives under fascist, authoritarian, or totalitarian regimes.
The state's policy with regard to fathers and fatherhood had a great impact on concepts of citizenship and gender in France in the era of the two World Wars. Drawing on new material that has only recently become available from the archives of the Vichy regime, Kristen Stromberg Childers analyzes the ways fathers were promoted as saviors of the nation after France's humiliating defeat by the Germans in June 1940. Childers argues that concern for the family and for the status of fathers in modern France was not merely a response to falling birthrates and German aggression, but was fundamental to the very notion of citizenship and political participation. The debate on men as gendered beings, Childers demonstrates, is central to the political, social, and cultural history of France in the modern age. The father figure became a focus as participants from all classes and across the political spectrum debated what was wrong with the French family and what policies were needed to remedy the problem. Childers examines how these policies were implemented, what they reveal about the development of the welfare state in France, and how they help explain the importance of Vichy in twentieth-century French history. Twenty-eight illustrations, including fifteen photographs, many never previously published, complement her argument.