This book examines how social science transforms a biological event--a birth--into a social and moral problem. Drawing on Foucault's "archaeology of knowledge," the book stresses the role of statistics and other truth-telling discourses in the birth and growth of the illegitimacy "problem" since the early nineteenth century. Chapters explore the diverse discursive origins of illegitimacy's negative meanings--expense, racial inferiority, social disorder, death, mental incompetence, fatherlessness and selfishness. The book offers an international perspective.

This book examines how social science transforms a biological event--a birth--into a social and moral problem. Drawing on Foucault's "archaeology of knowledge," the book stresses the role of statistics and other truth-telling discourses in the birth and growth of the illegitimacy "problem" since the early nineteenth century. Chapters explore the diverse discursive origins of illegitimacy's negative meanings--expense, racial inferiority, social disorder, death, mental incompetence, fatherlessness and selfishness. The book offers an international perspective.