Research Framework: During the first wave of COVID-19, practices in French maternity hospitals were heterogeneous, and restrictions mainly concerned the presence of accompanying persons and the requirement to wear a mask.

Objectives : We analyzed the impacts of the pandemic on the organization of care in the MaNaO birthing center on the island of Reunion, as well as the experiences of midwives, women who gave birth and their families.

Methodology: In 2021 and 2022, as part of the MaterCovid-19 research project (ANR), we carried out a study involving participatory observation and semi-structured interviews (n=34) with midwives and women at the birthing center, called MaNaO, on the island of Reunion.

Results: Our results show that while the health crisis has reinforced the medicalization of birth center spaces, MaNaO has been described by women and midwives as a pandemic-proof place, or a “COVID-free bubble”. Thanks to the human and intimate nature of all the care provided, the philosophy and independent access to the facility, which guarantees that every woman is supported during her examinations and on the day of delivery, as well as the early return home that is characteristic of this facility, the birth center has succeeded in protecting women and their families from the psychological and sometimes dehumanizing shock of the health crisis.

Conclusions : This research highlights the fact that the current demands from women and their families are not just about de-medicalization, but also about preserving the family nature of childbirth. It also points to the absolute necessity of reinforcing women’s emotional security.

Contributions : At a time when birthing centers are being tested in France, the results of this research could contribute to the social and political debate.

Mots-clés: childbirth, maternity, midwives, COVID-19, health

Research framework : The aspiration of sexual minorities to gain access to a kinship from which they were once excluded, the decline in the average age of first pregnancies and the multifactorial phenomenon of a decreasing number of adoptable children all point to the need to think differently about adoption, accepting that it needs not be exclusive of maintaining ties with the parents of origin.

Objectives : The aim of this paper is to identify what adjustments could be made to enable simple adoption to realize its full potential in contemporary society.

Methodology: The study was based primarily on an analysis of French legislation and jurisprudence, as well as theoretical insights, while also making allowance for comparative law (Canada, the United States and Cuba).

Results: It appears that, despite the obvious need for greater recognition of elective filiation in a context of disconnection between biology and kinship, the idea of recognizing genuine pluriparentage remains difficult for the French legislature to accept, and that simple adoption remains devalued as a secondary source of filiation.

Conclusions : To unleash the potential of simple adoption, it would suffice to make a few simple adjustments: equivalence of rights in terms of parental authority or inheritance taxation, use in the context of child protection and extension to all situations of multiple kinship, where it is in the child’s interest to have an additive parent recognized.

Contribution : This article shows that the persistent difficulty of the French legislator to draw the consequences of recent societal evolutions, that it has nevertheless accompanied, is essentially linked to the tenacity of the myth of begetting, and that major evolutions could be achieved without much effort, for the benefit of children.

Mots-clés: simple adoption, full adoption, parentage, paternity, maternity, assisted reproduction, parenthood, France

Research Framework : In Quebec, a child conceived through a surrogate pregnancy has initially as parents the woman who gave birth to him and the man (or one of the men) who instigated the parental project. To establish filiation with the non-statutory parent, adoption by special consent has been the route used for many years.

Objectives : This article aims to identify the issues that the use of adoption by special consent as a modality of affiliation in the context of surrogacy can generate during pregnancy and at the time of delivery, but also in the organization of family life in the postnatal period.

Methodology: The data presented are drawn from two qualitative research studies that gathered the experiences of people directly involved in a surrogacy arrangement through individual interviews. Forty-seven participants (n = 47) were interviewed, including twelve heterosexual parents, seventeen gay fathers, and eighteen surrogates. Data were subjected to secondary analysis by thematization.

Results: The results are broken down into three moments that punctuate the surrogacy process: 1) the intended parents’ sense of filiation and the surrogates’ refusal of maternal status, expressed as soon as the parental project is formulated and reiterated during the pregnancy; 2) the designation of the legal mother at the time of delivery; and 3) the families’ experience of public institutions in the postnatal period.

Conclusions : The period of uncertainty leading up to adoption by special consent weakens the experience of the intended parents that we encountered, in addition to entailing risks for the surrogates and the children thus born in the event of conflicts or dissolution of the agreement.

Contribution : The use of adoption by special consent in the context of surrogacy has been studied mainly from a legal perspective, through the study of family law judgments. This study allowed us to understand the issues underlying this form of affiliation, which has been used for some time in Quebec in the absence of a legal framework for surrogacy.

Mots-clés: adoption, parental leave, matrimonial right, rights, family, filiation, surrogate motherhood, homoparentality, infertility, maternity, kinship

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

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