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This article attempts to construct an “archeology of discourse” on the links between juvenile delinquency and the family as they developed between the constitutional monarchies of the time and the period of optimism of the Belle Époque. It chooses to set aside psychiatric and psychological considerations to focus on the legal field. This research highlights a change in paradigm that, in France, corresponds to the installation of a republican regime. In its determination to truly integrate the nation of workers, the Republic no longer disqualified the parents of the working classes. It sought firstly to identify truly unworthy parents and secondly to support fathers and mothers encountering difficulties.