Pertes et changements de filiation chez les enfants nés en France depuis les années 1960

A survey conducted by INED in 1997 using civil records as well as recent legal statistics retraced the way losses of paternal and of double filiation have evolved since the 1960s in France. The major shifts in conjugal behaviour during this period were not accompanied by further instability in filiation, and children are less likely to suffer now from loss of filiation than they were thirty or forty years ago. Children born outside marriage, those most affected by losses of filiation in the past, benefit the most from this greater stability. So do children born within marriage, for whom loss of filiation is very rare nowadays. Many children who have lost their paternal filiation benefit from a second filiation, particularly when the child is born in marriage. The vast majority of those who lose their double filiation recover it again, whether or not they were born in marriage.