Download or read book Governing the Hearth written by Michael Grossberg and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2004-01-21 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting a new framework for understanding the complex but vital relationship between legal history and the family, Michael Grossberg analyzes the formation of legal policies on such issues as common law marriage, adoption, and rights for illegitimate children. He shows how legal changes diminished male authority, increased women's and children's rights, and fixed more clearly the state's responsibilities in family affairs. Grossberg further illustrates why many basic principles of this distinctive and powerful new body of law--antiabortion and maternal biases in child custody--remained in effect well into the twentieth century.