Parents’ attitudes to their children’s partner choice: a century of change

How has the parents’ role in their children’s choice of partner evolved since the early 20th century in France? Analysing three surveys conducted over the last 60 years, Milan Bouchet- Valat and Sébastien Grobon retrace the rise of love marriages and the expansion of partner searches at the expense of matches supervised by the family. While parents are more tolerant of their children’s choice of partner than they were 50 years ago, their more liberal attitude follows a long period of mounting tension that culminated around 1968.