Minors,gender, and family: The discourses in the court system of traditional Buenos Aires |
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Authors: | Ricardo Cicerchia |
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Affiliation: | Ricardo Cicerchia is Professor at University of Buenos Aires, National Researcher at the CONICET, Consultant of UNICEF Argentina, and Coordinator of the Department of Social Sciences of the National Curriculum, Ministerio de Cultura y Educacidn, Argentina. He is currently a post-doctoral research-fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) of the University of London. |
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Abstract: | The article deals with public attitudes toward family responsibility in early-nineteenth-century Bienos Aires, particularly as revealed in lawsuits occasioned by disputes over the custody of minors. The care and education of minors was ordinarily entrusted to parents, but death, incapacity, licentious conduct, poverty or abandonment often resulted in the minor being removed from parents and taken by others into custody of guardians or institutions of public welfare. The majority of the analyzed lawsuits resulted from an attempt by parents to recover their authority over their children. The lawsuits indicate that the racial, gender, social, and generational “disadvantages” of plaintiffs did not a priori determine the judgement, but rather that arguments for family stability frequently were decisive when heard by sympathetic judges. Disadvantages persons thus frequently argued sucessfully about the meaning of the family, as protagonists in the legal system that otherwise often marginalized them. |
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Keywords: | early modern Finland history of domestic violence history of infanticide history of violence by children on parents |
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