Parents and Daughters: Change in the Practice of Dowry in São Paulo (1600-1770)
T is generally accepted that there were few changes in the structure of the Brazilian colonial family, and that only in the nineteenth century did the power of the patriarch decline.' This essay challenges the view of an immutable colonial family by describing significant changes in the practice of dowry between the midseventeenth and mideighteenth centuries that reflect a shift in patriarchal/parental power.2 I have used the term "parental" interchangeably