{"product_id":"sex-in-an-old-regime-city-9780190945183","title":"SEX IN AN OLD REGIME CITY","description":"\u003cp\u003eOur ideas about the long histories of young couples relationships and womens efforts to manage their reproductive health are often premised on the notion of a powerful sexual double standard.  In Sex in an Old Regime City  Julie Hardwick offers a major reframing of the history of young peoples intimacy. Based on legal records from the city of Lyon  Hardwick uncovers the relationships of young workers before marriage and after pregnancy occurred  even if marriage did not follow  and finds that communities treated these occurrences without stigmatizing or moralizing. She finds a hidden world of strategies young couples enacted when they faced an untimely pregnancy. If they could not or would not marry  they sometimes tried to terminate pregnancies  to make the newborn go away by a variety of measures  or to charge the infant to local welfare institutions. Far from being isolated  couples drew on the resources of local communities and networks. Clerics  midwives  wet nurses  landladies  lawyers  parents  and male partners in and outside the city offered pragmatic  sympathetic ways to help young  unmarried pregnant women deal with their situations and hold young men responsible for the reproductive consequences of their sexual activity. This was not merely emotional work; those involved were financially compensated. These support systems ensured that the women could resume their jobs and usually marry later  without long-term costs. In doing so  communities managed and minimized the disruptions and consequences even of cases of abandonment and unprosecuted infanticide.  This richly textured study re-thinks the ways in which fundamental issues of intimacy and gendered power were entwined with families  communities  and religious and secular institutions at all levels from households to neighborhoods to the state.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45666254815285,"sku":"ByrdShop_0190945184","price":41.47,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780190945183.jpg?v=1782425406","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/sex-in-an-old-regime-city-9780190945183","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}