In Press
Articles in press (accepted for publication) are made available online in this section pending the publication of the full issue. All available articles have been subjected to the Journal’s double-blind evaluation process.
These articles may be cited using the following information: Names, first names of author(s), title of article, year of publication
Wealth: A Family Matter
Céline Bessière, Maude Pugliese
Research framework: Over the past decade, social science research has been profoundly renewed by the measurement of socioeconomic inequalities, which no longer takes into account only socio-professional status, labor income, or qualifications, but also wealth. Family matters for inheriting wealth, saving it, or accumulating it through returns on investments. The accumulation of wealth brings into play the three major dimensions of kinship: descent, siblingship, and alliance.
Objectives: To establish a dialogue between the literature on socio-economic inequalities and the social sciences of the family.
Methodology: This introductory article is based on a literature review of various social science disciplines in economics, sociology, demography, history, anthropology, political philosophy and law.
Results: This issue of the journal Enfances Familles Générations is a plea for the social sciences to take into account both family ties and family assets, based on the concrete issues of inheritance, marriage, indebtedness and home ownership. Inheritance, its accumulation, preservation and transmission are, in fact, concerns within families of all social backgrounds.
Conclusion: Family dynamics – in interaction with the multiple actors in the family field – play a part in structuring economic inequalities within the family (especially gender inequalities) and between families (especially class- and race-based inequalities). But exploring inequalities in asset and debt also provides a better understanding of family relationships, since wealth participates in the making of the family.
Contribution: This introductory article affirms the importance of studying family wealth strategies across all social classes, and of multiplying the historical, national and cultural contexts of study.
Mots-clés: wealth, debt, inheritance, marriage, homeownership, economic inequality
Single men and women of the French Nobility: in the Service of Patrilineage (France, 17th-18th Century)
Juliette Eyméoud
Research Framework: By limiting the number of marriages per generation, the noble families from the 17th century created a large number of single men and women. The patrilineal ideology imposed itself and set back the egalitarian impulses that animated the nobility of previous centuries. Single individuals, mostly cadets, saw their inheritance shares reduced or transformed, with the aim of leaving the family patrimony in the hands of the eldest males.
Objectives : This article examines how single men and women adhere to this patrilineal ideology. By accepting the unequal inheritance order and actively participating in the financial well-being of the lineage, single men and women seem to have internalized their subordinate condition, while developing a high awareness of their role as economic pillars.
Methodology: This article offers a qualitative study of single men and women born between the late 16th and the late 17th centuries, into four French noble families. The study is based on notarial sources, such as inheritance settlements, donations, marriage contracts and wills.
Results: Single men and women pass on their paternal inheritance to the eldest males of the family, with the claimed goal of preserving the lineage heritage. They may also make donations and bequests to unmarried siblings or younger nephews/nieces, but these are usually life annuities or marginal inheritance.
Conclusions : Single men and women put their heritage at the service of patrilineage, favouring the eldest male and participating in the compensatory system that takes care of cadet siblings, thus reducing the risk of family conflict.
Contribution : This article provides an insight on the social history of French nobility and on the family history of Ancien Régime. It also sheds light on single men and women, who are still little-known individuals.
Mots-clés: singlehood, heritage, transmission, eldership, cadets, nobility
Rental Property Wealth and Social Mobility : The Domestic Savings of Working-Class and Immigrant Homeowners
Cécile Vignal
Research Framework: In a French context of widespread access to home ownership since the 1980s, rental property has long remained neglected in sociological analysis, in favor of owner-occupation analysis.
Objectives : This article aims to measure the ways in which working-class families accumulate rental assets across generations and genders, and to assess the effects on social trajectories.
Methodology: The article is based on a statistical analysis of Institut National de la Statistiques et des Etudes Economiques (Insee)’s “Histoire de Vie et Patrimoine” survey (2017-2018) and on interview material from 30 upper-, middle- and working-class landlords in Lille conurbation. This article focuses on 10 respondents from working-class backgrounds, one of whom is experiencing a strong upward social mobility towards the middle classes: 5 women and 5 men, aged between 43 and 75, mainly of North African immigrant origin.
Results: The analysis shows the importance of hard work on self-rehabilitation and division of dwellings that unabled them to become owners and then landlords. Rental income appears as a means of stabilizing the family group’s economy, as a form of “subsistence work” (Collectif Rosa Bonheur, 2019). Being a landlord is a marker of social success for immigrant families, supporting the social mobility of their children. Equal property rights serve, after separation or death, the autonomy of women who have managed to defend their share of the estate.
Conclusions : This article helps to understand the mobilization of kinship group in the context of working-class household savings, and the role of deindustrialized urban space in the creation of real estate wealth and rental income.
Contribution : This article contributes to the sociology of working-class and immigrant property ownership and to the renewal of analyses on social strata.
Mots-clés: landlord, working class, rental housing, family, gender, immigrant
Debt Work and Wealth Inequalities: A Gender Perspective
Caroline Henchoz, Tristan Coste, Anna Suppa
Research Framework: Existing studies agree that the work involved in managing debts and their consequences is mostly undertaken by women. We know that this debt work involves more deprivation and sacrifice, but we do not know its effects on women’s wealth.
Objectives : This article identifies processes explaining the link between debt work and the decline of women’s wealth.
Methodology: This article is based on 44 semi-structured interviews conducted in Switzerland with overindebted couples with or without children as part of two debt-related research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (2016-2022).
Results: We show that the predominance of women in debt work can be explained by the fact that it is not just financial and administrative work. It is experienced as parental and conjugal care work. Concern for and preservation of family members’ well-being, especially children, leads women to invest their own assets. Perceived as a means of doing gender in a situation of over-indebtedness by acting as a “good” mother and spouse, this work and the inequalities it produces are not called into question.
Conclusion : The financialization of everyday life implies new forms of financial work, such as debt work, which reinforce wealth inequalities within the family, with men’s wealth and that of their children being preserved to the prejudice of women’s wealth. In this regard, the financial assets of each family members have different meanings, with women’s wealth becoming an adjustment variable in the event of economic difficulties, enabling family status and good family relations to be maintained.
Contribution : By focusing on the financial burdens carried by women, this article offers a new approach to understanding the gendered processes involved in the constitution of wealth inequalities, which until now have focused mainly on gendered access to money and inheritance.
Mots-clés: money, care, debt, family, couple, gender, wealth, socio-economic inequalities
Inheriting in Canada: Portrait of Trends between 2005 and 2019. Increased inheritance rates among Quebec families and less educated households
Camille Biron-Boileau
Research Framework: The growing contribution of inheritance to social inequality in many countries is stimulating research into how this transmission takes place within families. However, very few studies have been conducted on the subject in the Canadian context.
Objectives: This research examines the extent to which Canadian families benefit from inheritance according to their social position. It also aims to study the temporal trends specific to the phenomenon, as well as the factors explaining the changes observed.
Methodology: Using 2005, 2012, 2016, and 2019 data from the Survey of Financial Security, regressions were conducted to study the odds of receiving an inheritance, and its value according to household characteristics and survey year.
Results: Families with higher socioeconomic status, as well as couples, are more likely to receive an inheritance, generally of greater value. A rise in inheritance has also been observed in Canada. Changes in the age structure partly explain this, but the more significant increase observed in Quebec and among households of lower socioeconomic status indicates the influence of other factors.
Conclusions: Inheritance contributes to the reproduction of economic inequalities due to its unequal distribution, and is a growing factor in Canada. The aging population explains some of the trend, but the influence of increasing rates of home ownership and house prices, as well as a change in wealth accumulation behaviours for children, may also be at play.
Contribution: This article contributes to the understanding of inheritance, which has scarcely been studied in Canada. The unequal distribution of inheritance raises equality issues in opportunity, and the role of the state in mitigating its effects.
Mots-clés: inheritance, socio-economic inequality, wealth, Canada, intergenerational transmission, aging, financial support, generation, parenting practice
Paul de Dieuleveult, Notable Breton Legitimist under the Second Republic (1848-1852): the Culmination of a Family Ascent
David Stefanelly
Research Framework: A Legitimist representative under the Second Republic (1848-1852), Paul de Dieuleveult (1799-1867) embodied the traditional Western notable in the mid-19th century. His privileged social position marks the culmination of a social ascent begun by his father, François-Marie, in Tréguier, Côtes-du-Nord.
Objectives: To examine the importance of family heritage in the Legitimist commitment of Paul de Dieuleveult and his fellow Legislative deputies.
Methodology: To achieve this, we will draw on the work of our thesis (Stefanelly, 2013) and on the biographical notes of parliamentarians.
Results: Paul de Dieuleveult’s commitment to the Legitimist cause was determined by his family background. His father rose socially through his medical activities, his two successive marriages, his attainment of a noble title and the exercise of local responsibilities under the Restoration. Paul belongs to this lineage. Thanks to him, he has considerable material and land assets. His marriage enables him to complete alliances with the region’s prominent families. His entry into politics in the final years of the Restoration period gave concrete expression to his legitimist commitment. The July Monarchy marked a political break, but he returned to the forefront of local political life in 1848 and became a member of parliament. During his term of office, he endeavored to build on his political base by preserving community unanimity.
Conclusion: Many of his fellow Legitimists in the West, birthplace of Legitimism, are part of a family heritage. A minority of them have less marked family antecedents and have emerged socially thanks to their abilities.
Contributions: The family dimension is essential to understanding the political commitment of a legitimist representative under the Second Republic, even if this is not true in all cases, and the individual psychological dimension is a factor to be taken into account.
Mots-clés: policy, family, father, sociology, family trajectories, family link, history, democracy, community
Parenthood and the Relationship to Politics in Post-Maoist China: the Struggle of the Middle Classes for Access to Educational Resources
Manon Laurent
Research Framework: In contemporary China, the ultra-competitive education system leads middle-class parents to invest time, money and energy to obtain the best educational resources and ensure their child’s success.
Objectives : In an authoritarian context where the middle class is often seen as a supporter of the ruling party-state, I show that defending the children’s interests leads middle-class parents to take an interest in education policies in particular, and to denounce decisions that seem unfair to them.
Methodology: I carried out an empirical investigation for over eight months in Nanjing (PRC) in 2018, during which I conducted 37 formal interviews with parents. I also observed interactions between parents and educational establishments (public and private). This empirical investigation is complemented by online monitoring of legislative developments, opinion debates and the parenting blogosphere.
Results: I observed how participation in online discussion groups, following educational news, and monitoring their child’s educational activities lead to the emergence of a political consciousness among middle-class parents. This phenomenon encourages some parents to take action to defend their interests.
Conclusions : The emergence of class consciousness among some parents transforms their relationship to politics, redefining the notion of justice, equality and conflict.
Contribution : This research calls into question the passivity of the Chinese middle classes and the impact of parenthood on the political socialization of individuals.
Mots-clés: China, political socialization, politics, social class, education
In the Name of the Father. Commitment and Exit of a Daughter of a French Communist Party Leader
Catherine Leclercq
Reseach framework: In France’s Pas-de-Calais coalfield, the Communist Party structured itself by politicizing local communities. By investing in families, it made possible “native” political socialization.
Objectives: This article focuses on the role of family ties in shaping and transforming political involvements.
Methodology: Thanks to a biographical interview with a former French Communist Party (FCP) activist in specific site and historical context, the aim is to reconstruct a trajectory which sheds light on the mechanisms of partisan attachment and then detachment.
Results: Irène Delvaux, born in 1936 in the Pas-de-Calais coalfield, where the FCP was strengthening its influence at the time, is a “native” communist: born into a committed family, her militant socialization began with her primary socialization. Daughter of a mineworker who became a trade union leader, a Communist executive and leader, then a member of parliament and mayor, she inherited a “red” politicization. Although she describes the context of her youth as “stalinist” and “sectarian” in retrospect, her story is marked by boundless admiration for her father, whom she describes as a devoted self-taught man and exemplary activist. Having become a municipal employee, she got involved with the party’s “base” and adopted its “openness” policies. In the 1990s, this position put her at odds with federal political direction. While this disagreement contributed to her break with the FCP in 1996, the feeling of non-recognition of her father by local activists precipitated her exit.
Conlusion: This trajectory of a Communist woman, which is inextricably bound up with socio-historical and affective logics (formation of a working-class political staff, strategic developments and partisan divisions, loyalty to a father who embodied domestic as well as political authority, succession of generations in Communist dynasties, inheritance management), sheds light on the ways in which family ties affect the partisan bond, and vice versa.
Contribution: As part of an oral history project, this text is a contribution to the sociology of socialization.
Mots-clés: biography, working class, commitment, family, France, Communist Party, father, politics
The Legacy of Minority Languages: What Linguistic Transmission and its Absence Do to Activism
Jeanne Toutous
Research framework : This article is the result of doctoral work in political science. The dissertation was conducted between 2016 and 2022. It was financed by a grant from the French ministry for higher education.
Objectives : The aim of this article is to explore the role of the family as an instance of political socialization (Zuckerman et al., 2007 ; Muxel, 2001 ; 2018) in the case of commitment to regional and minority languages as a form of alternative engagement. It is part of the study of the transmission and politicization of militant affiliations in families (Sears et Valentino, 1997 ; Muxel, 2008 ; Masclet, 2015 ; 2023).
Methodology: The study is based on semi-directive biographical interviews (with activists from the languages of Brittany and Lusatia) and participant observation.
Results: We show that the top-down transmission of regional/minority languages and the absence of a clear linguistic transmission help to define the modalities of activists’ commitment, as well as their way of politicizing the social world.
Conclusion : Reverse socialization and the role of the extended family (e.g., grandparents) need to be taken into account to understand how the “family” entity is mobilized in linguistic activism, just as it is partly redefined by it.
Contribution : This article contributes to the analysis of commitment to regional and minority languages by decompartmentalizing the notion of family socialization, in the wake of recent research in political sociology, while suggesting that politicization processes should be placed back at the heart of research on linguistic ideologies.
Mots-clés: socialization, reverse socialization, languages, activism
The Essence of Paternal Commitment among Farmer Fathers Living in Remote Areas: a Phenomenological Study
Gabriel Gingras-Lacroix, Oscar Labra
Research Framework: Scientific literature shows that farmers are particularly at risk of experiencing mental health problems. However, many farmers mention that their role as fathers is directly related to their state of health. To date, no study has examined the experience of paternal commitment in this population group.
Objectives: This article aims to describe the paternal commitment of Abitibi, as they perceived it.
Methodology: Descriptive phenomenological research was carried out with 14 farmers. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, and a descriptive phenomenological analysis was used to interpret the results.
Results: The farmers’ comments show that being actively present with their children is the essence of fatherhood, leading them to become involved as fathers in order to meet the physiological and emotional needs of their children, mentor them and ensure their education.
Conclusions: This study shows the work/family balance issues specific to farmers. However, further studies are needed to better understand the impact of these issues on the well-being of farmers and their families.
Contribution: This research shows that more support is needed for agricultural families, particularly by establishing resources to enable farmers to benefit from paternity leave, to have more time available to spend with their family, and to be able to bring their children to work safely.
“Mister Seed, Donor, but not Dad”: the Narrative Work of Single Mothers by Sperm Donation
Margot Lenouvel
Research Framework: The concept of personal origins is constantly evolving as the ways in which families are formed diversify. In France, parents who have recourse to sperm donation are now encouraged to pass on to their child the circumstances of their birth. These narratives are particularly important for single mothers: they are supposed to give the donor a part in the family history, without compensating for the absence of a second parent.
Objectives: This article aims to analyze how narratives about origins – in this case about donors – are constructed by single mothers.
Methodology: As part of a doctoral thesis, eighteen biographical interviews were carried out with single women who had become mothers through sperm donation, both abroad and in France. These interviews were complemented by the analysis of an online group, which was a productive field of investigation for observing family intimacies.
Results: Revealing one’s history gives rise to a variety of practices and narrative strategies, based on a moral norm of dual responsibility for single mothers. Investigating these narratives reveals the place assigned to the donor. He embodies a symbolic figure in family history, that is unrelated to kinship or filiation. His place is constructed in a feminine group that includes other single mothers, and is then negotiated with the close family. Furthermore, these narratives are materialized through the creation of various supports (books, images, films, etc.), testifying to single mothers’ desire to assert their family model.
Conclusion: The creation of the origin story is part of the narrative work of single mothers, aimed at their children and their relatives, and contributes to family memory.
Contribution: This article contributes to a better understanding of the experience of single mothers, and more generally of the place given to a donor in the history of families born of donation.
Mots-clés: single mother, medically assisted procreation, donation, procreative work, narrative, script, memory