Fathers, families and the state in France, 1914-1945

Scholars have demonstrated the pivotal importance of gender as a tool of analysis in the study of modern France. Much of the historiography on gender has focused on representations of women and their relationship to the nation as mothers and reproducers of future generations. This study examines the interactions between fathers, families and the state in France from 1914 to 1945, exploring the modeling of family roles for men and the integration of paternity in formulations of citizenship and social policy. Debates on fatherhood were central to political and social discourse and went to the heart of major issues facing French citizens of the late Third Republic and Vichy regime. In controversies over voting rights, public assistance, labor policy and social class, the father appeared as a key figure in the articulation of visions for France\u27s social and political future, and a critical concern for architects of the expanding welfare state. Participants in both the public and private sphere found themselves drawn into a discussion about nothing less than the nature of government, the shape of the modern family and the future of the nation. French social reformers from across the political spectrum drew on a rich heritage of convictions about fathers which both condemned them for their inadequacy and held them up as the key to the regeneration of the nation. Efforts to promote the pere de famille reached a climax under the Vichy regime, when instigators of the National Revolution struggled to reconcile strong paternal symbols with the realities of family life in occupied France. These efforts were marked by a constant tension between the desire for a return to a traditional social order and the impulses of an increasingly interventionist welfare state. Despite the rhetorical acclaim they received, fathers were unnecessary and even inconvenient to the projects of a state determined to protect mothers and children, and ultimately fathers\u27 interests lost out to the expanding rights of the family