"Tu peux compter sur moi": The Formation of the Young Couple in Early Eighteenth-Century France
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Winter 2022
Abstract
This study uses paternity suits in early eighteenth-century France to reconstruct youth sexual culture. The essay reads the sources in ways that center the narratives of the youth themselves within a broader context of peers, parents, guardians, and other established adults. The evidence provides information about the timeline and signs that represented the development of sexual relationships, as well as the range of spaces in which these occurred. The investigation allows historians to better understand and map the sexual and behavioral patterns of preindustrial French youth while also offering a reconsideration of constructions of sexual relationships and the weight of parental authority in the decades before the better-known demographic expansion of the latter eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Department
History
Print ISSN
1941-3599
Online ISSN
1939-6724
Publication Title
The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
Recommended Citation
Corley, C. (2022). "Tu peux compter sur moi": The formation of the young couple in early eighteenth-century France. The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 15(1), 29-47. doi:10.1353/hcy.2022.0002.
DOI
10.1353/hcy.2022.0002
Link to Publisher Version (DOI)
Publisher's Copyright and Source
Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press.
