Donzelot undertakes a study of the history of government of and government through the family. How did family shift from being a relatively autonomous, juridically powerful entity under the rule of the pater familias, to being something thoroughly and publicly governed through medicine, child welfare, and juvenile courts? Donzelot explores the ways that medical and psychiatric discourses of population health and productivity, efforts to reduce child mortality, and bourgeois morality brought forward a social/welfare state that used expert discourses to pierce the family.