Presentation by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovich. ‘BR/b’br/b The practices of secret childbirth and abandonment have taken different forms in France from the Revolution to the present day. Rather, when the Revolution (1793) wanted to keep the woman secret in order to protect her from social vindicte and to preserve her relationship with the child, the Third Republic very clearly shaped the secret of the child abandoned by the total breakdown of the subsidiary. Moreover, childbirth ‘under X’ (1941) made the granting of protective confidentiality for women in distress conditional on the anonymous abandonment of her child. From the 60s onwards, childbirth ‘under X’ seemed to be the most ‘practical’ way of enabling ‘plenary’ adoptions based on lies and mimetism of biological parenthood, contrary to the rights of the child and the natural mother. ‘BR/b’br/b When, since 1978, rendition to the ‘bourgeois secret’ has been broken down. For the first time, the law of Ségolène Royal (2002) partially called into question the ‘culture of secrecy’. In February 2003, the European Court of Human Rights approved French legislation maintaining the possibility of anonymity. Alongside reconstituted families or homelessness, the issue of ‘under X’ childbirth is now part of the issue of the development of parenthood. ‘BR/b’br/b’br/b Michel Cahen is a researcher at the CNRS at the Black Africa Study Centre at the Institute for Poltiic Studies in Bordeaux. In addition to his work on the contemporary history of Portuguese-speaking countries, he looked at facts of identity awareness: ethnicity, social and political identities and personal identity. For several years, he has been a frequent movement for the right to the origins of the desks and adopted.