Family succession through adoption in the Chosun Dynasty

Using a unique data source of genealogies of upper-status families, called Bulcheonwye families, we assess how the extent of family succession through adoption changed over five centuries from 1450 to 1949 in Korea. Our analysis shows the continued increase in the share of adopted sons among total family successors up to the end of the 19th century when three out of ten family successors were adopted. The trend of the increasing role of adoption is closely related to the declining number of sons per family, suggesting that not only the rising influence of Confucian culture but also demographic changes increased the demand for adoption. Finally, our comparison provides evidence that the likelihood of achieving high social status was significantly higher among adopted sons than biological ones, suggesting that the socioeconomic potential of adopted sons could be an important factor for adoption decision.     

Leaving home in a stem family system: Departures of heirs and non-heirs in pre-industrial Japan

To clarify the rules in a stem family, this study investigates the patterns of childrens' departures from home, using the 1870 household register of South-Tama, Musashi Province (4,787 individuals). Sons and daughters followed a schedule for home departures in their life course related to their sex and to sibling composition. Life-table analysis revealed that the ‘stayers’ were children without siblings, eldest sons, and eldest daughters with only sister; while the ‘leavers’ were younger sons with elder brothers and younger daughters. This pattern was present regardless of economic status, with some variation in the speed of leaving home among sons. The leavers in general left for various destinations via marriage, adoption, service, and work migration. Larger proportions of sons than daughters remained in the home village. Examination of the exceptions to the rule showed that they tended to be incapable of following the main pattern. Analysis of the timing of a child's departure in relation to the heir's marriage or to the birth of the heir's first child revealed that within the standard schedule, sons and daughters were retained or released for the advantage of the family. Sisters were replaced by in-marrying brides. Brothers were kept in the home until the next generation was secured. The departure of children, or heirs and non-heirs, can be a good variable for comparing the rules of family systems.     

IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN: STRUCTURE AND AGENCY IN A REVISED POWER-CONTROL THEORY OF GENDER AND DELINQUENCY*

A power-control theory of the gender-delinquency relationship draws attention to differences in familial control practices. We extend the theory to address how parental agency and support for dominant attitudes or schemas influence male as well as female delinquency. This extension emphasizes that differences in structure, particularly between more and less patriarchal households, result in different family practices, especially for mothers and sons. We find that variation in mothers' agency within the home affects their sons' support of conventional views, in particular, attitudes about the gendered nature of activities, risk preferences, and beliefs about impunity, as well as their involvement in delinquent activities. Thus, the agency of mothers in less patriarchal families is an underappreciated source of reduced delinquency among sons.     

Placing sons and daughters in the church: Strategies used by the gentry of Central Catalonia to maintain social status in the 17th and 18th centuries

This study analyses strategies for placing sons and daughters used by Notaries, Doctors of Law and Honorary Citizens of Manresa in the 17th and 18th centuries. Reconstructions of several family trees show that all of the sons, except the heir, went into the church and many of the girls remained single or went into convents. The consistency of this behaviour has led to an interpretation in terms of how these families maintained their social status, given their particular way of gaining access to resources. This study traces the way the younger generations entered the church and how they returned resources to the families they came from. Celibacy excluded many sons and daughters from inheriting the family patrimony and opened the way to combining patrimonies with other families. This happened if the heir had no children and the inheritance went to the eldest daughter married to the heir of another family. Combining patrimonies was one of the strategies used to deal with the problem of declining incomes suffered by these families.     

Family strategy of economic inequality among brothers in Korean rural society, 1690–1795

This article examines how inequality among brothers was practised as a family strategy in Korean south-eastern rural society from the end of the seventeenth to the late eighteenth century as a response to local economic changes. The Wolchon area experienced a process of downward levelling in this period. Using the household registers and land registers, the authors reconstituted 58 families with brothers who held land and 406 families who possessed nobi (‘serfs’ or ‘slaves’) for further examination. As a family strategy, most of these families attempted a strategy of unequal inheritance that resulted in maintaining high economic status for only one of the children among all the brothers. This child, in most cases, would be the eldest son, but also could be another son. The degree of inequality among brothers with regard to nobi-holding declined over time. Most families successfully maintained inequality, and through this family status, by efficiently practising the unequal inheritance strategy, while some families failed to keep the same level of inequality by the end of the eighteenth century. The degree of inequality among brothers is intimately connected to family property size. Each family sought its own strategy to suit the actual economic condition of the family. While very wealthy families attempted to give a similar inheritance to all brothers to provide an equal chance to each of them, less wealthy families reduced the survival chances of some children by the concentration of property given to only one child.     

Family Conferencing for Juvenile Offenders: A Singaporean Case Study in Restorative Justice

Restorative justice has been or is being adopted in many parts of the world, including countries in Asia. In the case of Singapore, restorative justice was adopted by the court system in 1997 as its guiding philosophy in its approach towards juvenile offenders. This article traces the adoption of restorative justice by the Juvenile Court in Singapore and the use of family conferencing in the light of the principles of restorative justice. It concludes by suggesting areas where the family conferencing system in Singapore can be improved, and possible lessons for other jurisdictions considering adopting family conferencing.     

Continuity and change among the Rhemish proletariat

Textile workers formed a major part of the population in Rheims at the end of the Old Regime. Traditionally, many pieces of cloth were woven both in urban and rural families for Rhemish manufacturers (fabricants). With economic changes during the 18th century, the French cottage proto-industry was in crisis. Unemployed textile workers, young males and females, moved to town. Family workshops had difficulties surviving in Rheims. One of the sons inherited the family loom, but he rarely kept his independence. Family histories presented in this study show how weavers relied on their family network in and outside the city in order to deal with irregular demand. The market required that production be diversified. At the same time, a concentration of the workforce developed in new, larger family enterprises. The role of female workers in textile production was often elusive. Single women and widows, women alone without a spouse, worked hard to survive and could rarely keep their children at home.     

The ‘wanted’ children. Experiences of Hungarian children living with Belgian foster families during the interwar period

Transnational adoption and child migration are often regarded as recent phenomena, yet there is a long history of children travelling without their families, settling and integrating in a foreign culture and environment. In the 1920s, thousands of Hungarian children went to Belgium for a six-month holiday within the framework of a humanitarian project. Although they were supposed to return to Hungary after their vacation, some of them stayed indefinitely with their Belgian families. By analyzing oral testimonies of the now elderly ‘children’ about their migration and childhood experiences in Belgium, we explore how they construct and reconstruct concepts such as childhood, vulnerability, and loyalty commitments, and show the crucial importance of maintaining birth family ties for the future development of transnationally adopted children.     

Long way to headship, short way to retirement: Adopted sons in a northeastern village in pre-lndustrial Japan

The article examines adoption practices from the perspective of the individual life course using a longitudinal population register (1716–1869) from an agricultural village in northeastern Japan. Adoption was never rare and was used to ensure succession in son-less households. A series of life-table analyses shows that adoption did not mean automatic headship. Adopted sons were often sent back (divorced) to their original households before acquiring headship. If they attained headship, they did not keep it as long as native sons. These results suggest that adoption mattered a great deal to villagers and to kinship organization, as folklore studies also attest.     

Adoptions Gone Awry: Enhancing Adoption Outcomes Through Postadoption Services and Federal and State Laws Imposing Criminal Sanctions for Private Internet Rehoming

The federal government should invest in adopted children who make up the future of the country and are in dire need of rehabilitation and therapy because of their past circumstances. If the government steps in to rescue vulnerable children from inadequate or abusive birth parents by removal, it should also intervene when adopted families are faced with behavioral problems of adopted children that the adopted parents cannot address on their own. Postadoption services need to be accessible and effective to ensure the success of adopted families. Assisting families in crisis postadoption will lower the instances of dissolution and rehoming and keep adoptive families intact. In cases in which postadoption services fail, uniform federal legislation is necessary to make it a federal crime to advertise children for adoption on the Internet without proper certification and state legislation is required to make it a crime to pass on adopted children to strangers without judicial consent, to dissuade Internet rehoming. Internet rehoming of adopted children should be a serious crime as it is tantamount to child trafficking.© 2014 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• Postadoption services need to be more accessible and more narrowly tailored to the needs of adoptive families to ensure the success of adoptions.
• Better postadoption services create better adoptive families and adoptive parents will not reach the point of dissolution or private Internet rehoming.
• Adoptive parents should be provided with information regarding all available postadoption resources after adoption is finalized and a government Web site should be created that lists all available resources.
• The federal government needs to provide funding to states that specifically target postadoption services.
• A uniform federal statute is required to punish parties who use Internet forums to avoid government oversight and privately rehome their adopted children.
• States should enact laws that criminalize the unauthorized interstate placements of children.

     

THE FAMILIAL TRANSMISSION OF CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS*

This article examines the familial transmission of criminal convictions in families in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Our main analyses focus on the 344 families in the Cambridge Study with two or more children. Criminal convictions were highly familial because convictions in a parent increased the risk of convictions in a child. Correlations between siblings were stronger in same-sex siblings (.45 to .50) than in opposite-sex ones (.27). Sibling correlations did not vary by birth order. Convictions of mothers and father correlated .55. Parent-child correlations were about the same as within-generation correlations between siblings. LISREL models were used to assess whether the effect of parental convictions on child convictions was direct or mediated through the quality of the family environment (i.e., supervision. child rearing, and family size). The best fitting LISREL models suggested a direct effect of parental convictions on child convictions, without any mediation by family environment. These data on fill biological siblings, however, did not permit separate estimation of family environmental versus genetic effects. One environmental effect appeared, however—a socialization effect among siblings; in families with three sons, there appeared to be mutual influence of one sibling on another. Also, regression models based on the boys suggested that family environmental variables did add to parental criminality.     

The ‘wanted’ children. Experiences of Hungarian children living with Belgian foster families during the interwar period

Transnational adoption and child migration are often regarded as recent phenomena, yet there is a long history of children travelling without their families, settling and integrating in a foreign culture and environment. In the 1920s, thousands of Hungarian children went to Belgium for a six-month holiday within the framework of a humanitarian project. Although they were supposed to return to Hungary after their vacation, some of them stayed indefinitely with their Belgian families. By analyzing oral testimonies of the now elderly ‘children’ about their migration and childhood experiences in Belgium, we explore how they construct and reconstruct concepts such as childhood, vulnerability, and loyalty commitments, and show the crucial importance of maintaining birth family ties for the future development of transnationally adopted children.     

Nuptiality and family reproduction in male-inheritance systems: reflections on the example of the Franche-Comte (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries).

"The family system practiced in the rural Franche-Comte [France] until the nineteenth century was based on egalitarian inheritance among sons and on the exclusion of daughters; as such, it was associated with distinct Malthusian nuptiality. This system cannot be understood without an examination of the formation and dynamics of a type of family that included frequent stages of undivided patrimony and coresidence in a context giving little encouragement to neolocal marriage and to the independence of sons. A comparative perspective suggests certain similarities with the stem family system, despite differences in inheritance norms.... Acceptance of the common idea of a contrast between impartible and partible inheritance should be highly qualified, insofar as partibility can hide various patterns of social reproduction. Different kinds of joint family household systems must be distinguished carefully, for they have neither the same significance nor imply the same demographic patterns."     

INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTIONS: INSTITUTING EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS IN THE ADOPTION PROCESS TO FACILITATE AWARENESS OF CULTURAL IDENTITY ISSUES

In 1995, China first claimed the designation as the number one location for parents from the United States seeking to adopt children. The children, for the most part girls, are between 6 and 20 months old, when they are adopted. Most of the girls that were adopted in 1995 are now entering into their preteen years, and if they have not already confronted the issue of who they are, they will soon be forced to. Adoption is a complicated and emotional process that affects the entire family. Traditionally, parents who adopt have been able to consciously choose when and how they will first tell their child that they are adopted. However, when the adopted child is a member of a transracial family, where the parents and adoptive child are obviously of a different race, this decision can sometimes be taken out of their hands by a stranger thoughtlessly asking, “Is she yours?” The parents who choose to adopt from a foreign country should be prepared to answer this question and numerous others before they bring their adopted child home. This note will explore the concept of incorporating educational programs into the intercountry adoption process as an effective method of educating prospective parents on the challenges that transracial families will confront.     

The dynamic of family structures in seventeenth-century Moldavia. Adoption and godparenthood

This study analyzes aspects related to family structure and kinship (in particularly, to relations between parents and children, but other types than the blood relations) and the influences they had on seventeenth-century Moldavian society. In the first part, the focus is on the practice of adoption that is mainly mentioned in documents through the expression taking into one's soul and has as its main purpose ensuring posterity and implicitly transmitting patrimony. This analysis is based on juridical disposition and diverse types of documents conserved referring to this practice, trying to outline the importance of this gesture in Early Modern Moldavian society and the nature of the reasons which caused the individual to choose this lineage manner. Also, for a better understanding of the role and the amount of the patrimony inherited by the adopted children in the destiny of a family and its social implications, the method of comparing the adoption in contrast with other spiritual kinships, especially with baptismal sponsorship, has been used.     

Succession strategies in the Pyrenees in the 19th century: The Basque case

Basque customs in the Old Regime dictated the traditional succession rules of aînesse intégrale, which entitled the first-born male or female child to inherit all family assets (house and land) upon marriage. He or she was then to cohabit with the parents as a stem family, thus securing the transition and continuity of the house. With the implementation of the Civil Code in the 19th century, these ancient succession practices were abolished, forcing families to partition their assets equally among their children. Family reconstitution, succession records, and land registers of the 19th century indicate that, despite the new law, Basque families circumvented the law to transmit their property to one child, thus avoiding partitioning and securing continuity of the house. To perpetuate their ancient succession practices, families elaborated new strategies, showing flexibility toward traditional practices (especially aînesse intégrale) and making concessions to the heir or heiress, spouse, and siblings. They adapted the customs to the new law while maintaining the most essential prerogatives of ancient family traditions (single inheritance) for the survival of the “house system”.     

Neighborhood Advantage,Relative Status,and Violence Among Foreign-Born Adolescents

Immigrant families and contexts are protective for delinquency, even though recent immigrants are more likely to be poor and reside in disadvantaged settings. Yet it is unclear whether the protective effects of immigrant status depend on the match between family SES and neighborhood advantage. This study examines the interplay among immigrant status, family SES, and neighborhood advantage in predicting adolescent violence. Using multilevel longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (N = 1,908), findings show that first-generation adolescents from low-SES families have the highest odds of violence in the most advantaged contexts, exceeding that of even third-generation adolescents. In contrast, high-SES first-generation adolescents have the highest probability of violence in less advantaged contexts, but the lowest in the most advantaged neighborhoods. The results identify conditions under which the protective nature of immigrant status is eroded, and highlight the importance of relative status for understanding violence among foreign-born adolescents.     

WHY DID YOU CHANGE YOUR NAME? Name Changing Patterns and the Life Course in Early Modern Japan

Many legal documents of the early modern period of Japan's history contain references to common people changing their personal legal names. This article is a first report of an effort to discover why men changed their names and the social structures behind this behavior. The study uses the population registries of Nishijo village in Central Japan to trace the name changes of men in the village, and the life courses of men who changed their names and of those who did not. It analyzes the relation of name changers to life events, to their family members, and to family structure. Name changing was strongly related to succession to the headship and inheritance in the stem family. In some families, specific names were inherited together with the headship. However, name changing seems to have been more commonly used to mark heirs and eldest sons who did not inherit and thus reveals the maneuvering within families to ensure the capable lineal continuity of the family. Name changing patterns may be an important tool for understanding the development of the stem family.     

Gender aspects of inheritance strategies and land transmission in rural Scania,Sweden, 1720–1840

This study deals with gender aspects of land transmissions in pre-industrial Sweden. Although not supported by law, a clear mentality of male primogeniture among peasants existed in the Swedish countryside in the 18th century. In many cases, however, this ideal could never be realized, making the idea of the “family farm,” handed down from father to son for generations, more of a myth than a reality. This study uses postmortem inventories linked to tax registers and family reconstitutions for a sample of parishes in southern Sweden to show that various strategies were chosen when transferring the farm after the death of the husband or wife. Although sons were more likely to take over the farms, daughters (or more correctly sons-in-law) also frequently did so, as did, sometimes, more distant kin and non-kin. Moreover, it was not the case, as has sometimes been maintained, that daughters took over the farm only when no able-bodied sons were available. On the contrary, daughters (sons-in-law) quite frequently took over the farm even when sons were present. The decision on land transmission was part of a more general family strategy concerning reproduction (access to marriage and household formation) as well as old-age security.     

Continuity and change among the Rhemish proletariat: Preindustrial textile work in family perspective

Textile workers formed a major part of the population in Rheims at the end of the Old Regime. Traditionally, many pieces of cloth were woven both in urban and rural families for Rhemish manufacturers (fabricants). With economic changes during the 18th century, the French cottage proto-industry was in crisis. Unemployed textile workers, young males and females, moved to town. Family workshops had difficulties surviving in Rheims. One of the sons inherited the family loom, but he rarely kept his independence. Family histories presented in this study show how weavers relied on their family network in and outside the city in order to deal with irregular demand. The market required that production be diversified. At the same time, a concentration of the workforce developed in new, larger family enterprises. The role of female workers in textile production was often elusive. Single women and widows, women alone without a spouse, worked hard to survive and could rarely keep their children at home.