Making Family: Depopulation and Social Crisis in France

This chapter explains about making family, depopulation and social crisis in France. It discusses the increasing emphasis on the social promotion and social responsibility of families as a solution to the demographic crisis led to specific determinations about who would be responsible for assuring the future of French society and bringing French society out of its crisis. The fears of depopulation and the sense of social crisis seem to be a response to the drop in birthrates below replacement levels were actually the outcome of a growing concern over how certain members of the population might alter the constitution of French society. The chapter examines the conceptions of social membership expressed in French family policy and addresses the ways in which differential access to family benefits served to reinforce processes of exclusion and marginalization. The reason given by policy-makers for distribution of family benefits was that demographic situation in the overseas departments was the opposite of that in the Metropole.