ABSTRACT
Until the 1960s French tradition was based firmly on woman’s confinement in the home and her material dependence on her husband as breadwinner and financial administrator. Under the law of September 1942, which persisted until reforms in December 1964, the husband was the moral and material head of the family. It was he who made the ultimate decisions regarding choice of abode and the welfare of his (legitimate) children, and who dictated the nationality of his foreign wife. (Until the law of January 1973 a foreign woman automatically took French nationality upon marriage).
