Sandra Brée

French National Centre for Scientific Research | CNRS · LARHRA

Singlehood appears to be an understudied topic in the social sciences, and a particularly diverse field of research. Focusing on the United States and France, this article reviews existing literature to answer three questions that are prerequisites for theorizing singlehood (1) What is singlehood? We first discuss the diversity of terms used in ord...

We aim to build a vast database (up to 9 million individuals) from the handwritten tabular nominal census of Paris of 1926, 1931 and 1936, each composed of about 100,000 handwritten simple pages in a tabular format. We created a complete pipeline that goes from the scan of double pages to text prediction while minimizing the need for segmentation l...

Cet article retrace l’histoire de la rencontre de deux jeunes gens dans une ville de banlieue parisienne en 1950. La source est composée d’un ensemble de documents exceptionnels, et notamment un poème d’une cinquantaine de pages qui raconte heure par heure cette rencontre et les premiers rendez-vous, jusqu’au consentement arraché aux parents. La pr...

The decline in fertility has been the subject of much research, particularly on the countries that were the precursors of this historic decline. But, if research has focused on the mechanisms of the adoption of birth control, studies about the changes in fertility in cities are less frequent. To fill this gap, this article proposes to study Paris,...

This paper proposes a re-reading of the history of divorces from the re-establishment of divorce in France in 1884 until the eve of the First World War, by distinguishing three major territories: the urban population, the rural population and the Department of the Seine. To refine the analysis, we will add data distinguishing Paris from its suburbs...

If the witnesses of 19th-century civil marriages have been the subject of several researches, especially to distinguishing related and non-related witnesses, less attention has been paid to the precise choice of family members or the non-related witnesses. Even less attention has been paid to the parents of the brides and grooms, their presence or...

Unmarried couples, for whom living together is difficult to bear, or even becomes a real ordeal, are a reality in many societies, past and present. For the past centuries, their existence refers most of the time to the rules surrounding marriage and in particular the choice of spouse. Indeed, when this choice is made according to rigid rules, by th...

Entre les recherches sur les premiers divorces du xix e siècle et les recherches sociodémographiques sur les divorces actuels (en particulier à partir des années 1960), les études historiques sur les désunions judiciaires, et surtout sur les désunis, sont rares. Mais, avant d’entreprendre une histoire des séparés et des divorcés, il est important d...

The purpose of this article is to analyze the relationship between fertility and the social class of women whose reproductive lives took place during the first decades of the 20th century in France and Belgium. The educational level of these women is considered as a measure of social belonging and the analysis is based on the use of retrospective d...

How did WWI affect the love lives of ordinary citizens and their interactions as couples? This book focuses on how dramatic changes in living conditions affected key parts of the life course of ordinary citizens: marriage and divorce. Innovative in bringing together demographic and gender perspectives, contributions in this comparative volume draw...

This paper aims to understand the impact of the First World War on marriages and divorces and eventually on gender relations in France. It first discusses how women responded to the shortage of marriageable men by adapting their partner choices: they more frequently established unions with widowed or divorced men, and with foreigners, as well as wi...

This edited volume brings together historians, sociologists, and demographers from across Europe to shed light on three specific aspects of the impact of The Great War on the life-courses of “ordinary” citizens. Chapters investigate key aspects of marriage (1) and divorce (2), using these as a window into gender relations (3). They do so by placing...

This edited volume brought together quantitative and qualitative contributions from across Europe to shed light on the Impact of the First World War on marriage, divorce and gender relations in European countries troubled by the war. Chapter contributions asked how key parts of the life course of ordinary citizens were affected, and what the role o...

De manière plutôt surprenante, il existe assez peu de recherches d’histoire sociale ou de démographie historique sur la pratique du divorce en France à la fin du xix e siècle et au début du xx e . Sur les banlieues, le silence est total alors qu’elles offrent un cadre singulier pour le recours au divorce, surtout à partir de la seconde moitié du xi...

Programme du prochain colloque de la Société de Démographie historique "Divorcer autrefois ? La séparation matrimoniale du Moyen-Age au XXe siècle. Mondes européens et extra-européens"

Following the law of 1884 that re-authorised divorce in France, divorce was more frequent in the large cities before spreading to other urban areas and then to rural ones. Divorce rates were especially high in the Seine département from 1884 to the eve of the First World War. In this region, divorced people lived more frequently in Paris than in th...

À travers le prisme d’Adolphe Landry et d’Édouard Fuster, sensibles aux questions sociales, et notamment à la protection de la famille, c’est le contexte démographique, social et politique autour de la famille durant l’entre-deux-guerres que cet article tente de brosser. Landry est une figure centrale des milieux intéressés à la population et s’ins...

To better understand the forces underlying fertility decisions, we look at the forerunn ers of fertility decline. In Rouen, France, completed fertility dropped between 1640 and 1792 from 7.4 to 4.2 children. We review possible explanations and keep only three: increases in materialism, in women’s empowerment, and in returns to education. The method...

Jusqu’au milieu du xviiie siècle, la procréation en dehors du mariage est encore un comportement marginal même si elle est admise dans certains pays européens comme conséquence éventuelle du rituel de séduction prémarital. Ces naissances, alors appelées « illégitimes » ou « naturelles », augmentent ensuite alors que l’Europe s’industrialise et s’ur...

Call for papers for the next conference of the SDH: "Divorce in the past? Matrimonial separation from Antiquity until the 20th century. European and non-European worlds" (Deadline: December 15th) Appel à communications pour le prochain colloque de la SDH "Divorcer autrefois ? La séparation matrimoniale de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle. Mondes européen...

À travers le prisme d’Adolphe Landry et d’Édouard Fuster, sensibles aux questions sociales, et notamment à la protection de la famille, c’est le contexte démographique, social et politique autour de la famille durant l’entre-deux-guerres que cet article tente de brosser. Landry est une figure centrale des milieux intéressés à la population et s’ins...

À travers l’analyse longitudinale des parités et des probabilités d’agrandissement, cet article retrace l’évolution de la fécondité des générations féminines en France nées entre 1850 et 1966. Après avoir présenté les sources et données disponibles (recensements de population et enquêtes Famille), et les méthodes utilisées pour l’analyse rétrospect...

Through a longitudinal analysis of parities and parity progression ratios, this article charts the fertility of the cohorts of women born in France between 1850 and 1966. After reviewing the available sources and data (population censuses and family surveys), and the methods used for retrospective cohort analysis of fertility, the author proposes e...

Abstract During the interwar period, fertility dropped to very low levels in many western Eu-ropean countries, almost always below the replacement level but not much is known about this phenomenon. To bring new features, this paper focuses on family size in France and in Belgium for cohorts of women born between 1872 and 1931 (distin-guishing women...

The nineteenth century marks a turning point for the French population as it is the century of urbanization, industrialization and demographic transition. Although France was, as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, the precursor of the decline of fertility, it is in the capital that birth control was the strongest. Paris, which is experi...

The purpose of this study is to highlight the interactions between fertility transitions and economic developments from the 18th to the 21st century, both theoretically and empirically. Particular attention is paid to the main economic crises that have characterized the history of Wallonia during the last centuries. These periods of recession requi...

Entre la Restauration et la fin du XIX e siècle, les attitudes face à l'accouchement évoluent à Paris. Depuis l'ouvrage de Scarlett Beauvalet-Boutouyrie , on connaît bien les accouchées et les accoucheurs de la Maternité de Port-Royal, la modernisation de l'hôpital et l'amélioration des conditions d'accouchement, ainsi que l'effrayante mortalité du...

The historical demographic studies on fertility have largely focused on the early stages of the transition and few of them have specifically examined the interwar period. Yet fertility then reached very low levels, often below the generation replacement level. Two main hypotheses are generally advanced to explain these low levels of fertility. This...

http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=POPU_1601_0085 Comparison of Retrospective Fertility Data from Censuses in Belgium and Family Surveys in France Fertility behaviour in France and Belgium in the first half of the twentieth century is still quite poorly understood, owing mainly to legislation that prohibits the use of individual data les...

http://www.cairn-int.info/abstract-E_POPU_1601_0085--comparison-of-retrospective-fertility.htm Fertility behaviour in France and Belgium in the first half of the twentieth century is still quite poorly understood, owing mainly to legislation that prohibits the use of individual data less than 100 years old, and to the paucity of cross-sectional ag...

The aim of this study is to demonstrate, from a theoretical and from an empirical point of view, the long-term interactions between the fertility transitions and the economic evolutions in Wallonia during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Particular attention is given to the principal economic crises that have marred history in the last centuries....

In 2012, no European or North American country had a total fertility rate above 2.2 children per woman (United Nations 2013). France and the United States were only modest exceptions—two of the four European and North American averaging above 2 children per woman. Historically, France and the United States were exceptional as well as countries begi...

The purpose of this study is to highlight the interactions between the demographic transition and economic developments in Belgium from the 18th to the 21st century of a theoretical and empirical perspective. Particular attention is given to major economic crises that have punctuated the history of Belgium in the last centuries. These recessionary...

The fertility decline in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries is often only broached through the fertility of married couples. In 19th century Paris however, illegitimate fertility is particularly high and it is important to analyze its evolution independently of the marital fertility. First, this research aims at measuring the level of these...

The decline in European fertility in the 19th centu ry was often concomitant with the process of urbanisation and thus the migrations toward cities. How these mi- grants, most of them coming from regions less contr aceptive than the host city, could have affected the movement of birth control? And what are the other conse- quences of urbanisatio...

The fertility decline in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries is often only broached through the fertility of married couples. In 19th century Paris however, illegitimate fertility is particularly high and it is important to analyze its evolution independently of the marital fertility. First, this research aims at measuring the level of these...

The fertility decline in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries is often only broached through the fertility of married couples. However, in 19th century Paris, illegitimate fertility is particularly high and it is important to analyze its evolution independently of marital fertility. First, this research aims to measure the level of these two t...

http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=ADH_126_0081 The Parisian suburbs are particularly suitable to analyse the mechanisms of fertility decline. the geographical proximity to Paris (known for its early fertility decline) and the great social diversity in this limited space allow asking the questions of diffusion and adaptation of contracep...