'Epidemics' of teenage pregnancy and 'amazing' rises in illegitimacy are part of a current moral panic about sex. There is often a yawning gulf between image and reality.

In 1859 a shocked pamphleteer wrote 'The inhabitants of Banffshire may clothe themselves in sackcloth, for there is no spot on the broad expanse of Europe so steeped in impurity'. This interdisciplinary analysis examines the presuppositions behind such rhetoric, contrasting it with the detailed social and demographic fabric of a regional culture.

Dr Blaikie has pioneered the application of family reconstitution to Scottish material. Hitherto neglected sources have been imaginatively combined to reconstruct the social world of Rothiemay, a farming parish where household relationships, welfare and religious treatments indicate bastardy to be closely accommodated to community norms. Deviance theories are thus inappropriate, while the Scottish case questions the received wisdom of English and European demography.

This lucid and authoritative study will appeal to sociologists, social and economic historians and those specialising in Scottish history.