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."