Governing the Hearth | University of North Carolina Press ~ Michael Grossberg

Governing the Hearth

Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America

Michael Grossberg

Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 01/2004
Pages: 436
Subject: Law, History | University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9780807863367

DESCRIPTION

Presenting a new framework for understanding the complex but vital relationship between legal history and the family, Michael Grossberg analyzes the formation of legal policies on such issues as common law marriage, adoption, and rights for illegitimate children. He shows how legal changes diminished male authority, increased women's and children's rights, and fixed more clearly the state's responsibilities in family affairs. Grossberg further illustrates why many basic principles of this distinctive and powerful new body of law--antiabortion and maternal biases in child custody--remained in effect well into the twentieth century.