ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book suggests that eighteenth-century Toulouse, notaries drawing up contracts were careful to use the terms along with maratre, paratre and filatre to distinguish types of stepfamily relationships, although the distinctions were missing from the judicial courts and parish registers. It considers whether interchangeable kinship terms in eighteenth-century France, such as referring to a stepmother as an 'aunt', might indicate an affectionate bond forged by living together for many years. The book illustrates the illegitimate children of errant noble husbands in seventeenth-century Spain might not be formally recognized, but relationship could be expressed in roundabout phrases such as 'the son of her husband'. It examines stepfamily dynamics are rarely noted on the surface, but must be unravelled as part of the web of kin relationships within the court case, a problem compounded by the interchangeable terms mother-in-law and stepmother or father-in-law and stepfather.
