Research Mondays: "Of Dads and Damages: Searching for the ‘Priceless Child’ and the ‘Manly Modern’ in Quebec’s Civil Courts, 1921-1960"

Abstract

Part of a broader study of fathers and fatherhood in 20^th-century Quebec, this paper begins with the following questions: Where did a father’s responsibility for the delinquent acts of his minor children begin and end? Could he be held accountable before the law for failing to provide the education and vigilance that might have prevented a child’s dangerous behaviour? Conversely, what sort of compensation could a father expect, and on what legal basis, should his minor child suffer moral or physical harm, up to and including death, as a result of someone else’s transgression? How if at all, furthermore, did these dynamics evolve in Quebec between 1921 and 1960? These after all were decades during which, while a more modern conception of paternal rights and responsibilities was certainly on the rise, the patriarchal principle of la puissance paternelle  (paternal power, authority, or dominion) remained enshrined in law. The study is based on a collection of civil suits reported in the province’s law journals and selected for their general relevance to the legal dimensions of fatherhood in Quebec. It will draw in particular on 89 civil suits for damages related to injuries inflicted either on or by minor children, focusing most specifically on the role of fathers as both defendants and plaintiffs in these cases. For the plaintiffs – fathers suing for damages related to injuries suffered by their children – the ideas developed by Viviana Zelizer in Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton University Press, 1994) will be central to the analysis. Although the law only allowed compensation for material losses attendant upon the death of a child, for instance, these cases may provide some evidence that society was moving towards greater recognition of the moral and emotional suffering attendant upon such tragedies. For the defendants – fathers being sued for injuries caused by their children – I begin with two observations: 1) that all of the cases identified in this way involved transgressions committed by boys and young men; and 2) that these suits therefore provide an opportunity to examine the expectations placed by society on the father-son relationship as a privileged space for the transmission of masculine identity, and in particular of that emerging bundle of traits and characteristics, many of them wrapped up in 20^th-century conceptions of risk-taking and risk-management, that Christopher Dummitt calls the Manly Modern. (Dummitt, The Manly Modern: Masculinity in Postwar Canada, UBC Press, 2007).