History of the Care of Foundlings.—For two reasons it is necessary that we should deal with the history of the care of foundlings. In the first place, it is a branch of child-protection which is rightly considered to be of great importance, and yet in regard to this branch the most erroneous views prevail alike among laymen and non-laymen. In the second place, the care of foundlings to-day cannot possibly be understood by[142] those who know nothing of the history of the institution. Even during the time at which infanticide and the exposing of children were still legally permissible among the Romans, these practices were condemned by public opinion, especially when the excuse of great poverty was lacking, and they were regarded as a misuse of parental authority. This applies even more to infanticide than to the exposing of children; for in the case of the latter, it was always possible that the child would be rescued and brought up by a third person. The Church naturally regarded both infanticide and the exposing of children as immoral and sinful. But what could the Church do to prevent infanticide? Infanticide was largely a result of the fact that the Church and public opinion strongly condemned illegitimate sexual relationships; in actual fact, infanticide was usually the act of an unmarried mother. The only course open to the Church, if it wished to prevent infanticide, was to tolerate the exposure of children, and to take steps to ensure that the children thus exposed should not perish. The Church permitted the lesser evil in order to prevent the greater. According to some authorities, the priests even publicly exhorted fallen women to expose their children at the church doors. In many churches, marble basins were placed, in which children could be left. In many communities, it was the duty of the verger to take first charge of exposed children. Thus, the exposing of children on these lines became transformed into a kind of legitimate transference to another of the duty of maintaining a child. To expose a child in any other way was a punishable offence. Since those children that survived had to be brought up, the Church made provision for this also. Gradually institutions were founded, to which children were brought secretly, where they were received without restriction as to number, and where they were brought up. The institution of the turn-table dates from about the year 1200, and for many centuries thereafter was the general method for the secret reception of the children. The turn-table is a box, one side of which is left open, fixed in the outer wall of the foundling hospital, and rotating upon a vertical axis. Anyone wishing to leave a child at the institution has merely to pass the child[143] through the opening on to the turn-table, and then to ring the bell adjacent to the turn-table. Someone within the institution thereupon rotates the table to receive the child, while the person who brought it can go away unseen.
The foundling hospitals of former times were mere death-traps, with an infant mortality of 60 to 95 per cent. With the advance of medical and educational science, and with the growth of milder views regarding illegitimate sexual relationships, foundling hospitals have been greatly transformed. Turn-tables have for the most part been abolished, so that they remain to-day in a few countries only, and in a few foundling hospitals. Unrestricted and secret reception of infants has been replaced by restricted and public reception; institutional care has given place to external care; natural feeding, wherever possible, is preferred to artificial feeding. By these means, the infant mortality has been greatly diminished, and those children that survive receive a much better upbringing. With the passage of time, the foundling hospitals have come to receive not foundlings (abandoned and exposed children) only, but also other children inadequately cared for by the persons legally responsible (parents, guardians, &c.). The foundling hospitals thus take over the work formerly done by orphan asylums and similar institutions.
The children received by a modern institution remain under its roof for a short time only, until foster-parents have been found for them, and return to the institution only in the event of illness. Children that are ill when first received, are boarded out only after they have recovered. The foster-parents are remunerated and subject to inspection. Thus the modern foundling hospital is: 1. A depot for the reception of children; 2. A children’s hospital; 3. The centre for the supervision of the children that are boarded out. The latest phases in the development of the care of foundlings can best be studied in Hungary. In this country the matter has been the subject of recent legislation and regulation, and every child declared by the local authorities to be abandoned or neglected is received into a foundling hospital. There have, of course, been countries and districts in Europe in which such institutions as foundling hospitals never developed,[144] or in which those that did develop soon passed into disuse (for instance, in consequence of the Reformation); here foundlings were cared for in another way. The feudal chiefs, who, as is well known, cared for the poor within the limits of their fief, took over also in such cases the care of foundlings. Owing to the desire for the rapid increase in population characteristic of the dominance of the mercantile system of political economy, foundling hospitals existed transitorily in Protestant countries.
The Latin System and the Germanic System.—Two circumstances mainly determine the manner in which in a particular country the care of foundlings is regulated. The first of these is the condition of poor relief in the country we are considering, inasmuch as the care of foundlings is merely one section of poor relief. The second is the legal position of illegitimate children, for the majority of the children to be dealt with in this connection are illegitimate. The essential peculiarity of the Latin system lies in this, that abandoned and neglected children are dealt with through the mediation of foundling hospitals. This system obtains especially in those countries in which no inquiry into paternity is permitted. In the Germanic system, on the other hand, foundling hospitals are unknown, and abandoned and neglected children are dealt with on the same lines as other destitute persons. The children are cared for directly by the local authorities responsible for poor relief, being in some cases boarded out, in others cared for in orphan asylums or other institutions. The foster-parents of boarded-out children are directly supervised by the Poor Law authorities. If the parents or other near relatives of the children are living, it is only when the relatives are unable to provide properly for the children, or are themselves in need of poor relief, that the children are regarded as requiring public assistance. The public assistance, in such cases, is not given to the child, but to the person or persons regarded as legally responsible for the child’s support. Thus, the child remains with its family as an individual relieved in common with its relatives. The Latin system employs a similar method to the one just explained for the relief of unmarried mothers (secours temporaire—secours[145] aux filles-mères). To render it unnecessary for the mother to send her child to a foundling hospital, and to relieve her of the cost of maintaining it outside, she is provided with a monthly allowance. This method, which, notwithstanding obvious defects, is ever more widely applied, is of course associated with a supervision of the mother—a supervision that is too often defective.
Institutional care is altogether unsuitable for infants. For the child which cannot be cared for in its own family, the only efficient and natural substitute is that it should be cared for in another family; in comparison with this the best institutional care is purely mechanical. Depots are, however, indispensable for the temporary care of children until a suitable family can be found for their reception. It often happens, for example, that a child needs public assistance immediately after birth, and for such a child the depot is the only place available. Of late years, even in the Germanic countries, this has been more and more clearly recognised, and the Germanic system has in consequence undergone substantial alterations. Depots are being instituted, and much greater stress is being laid on family care. In England again, the significance of institutional care (the workhouse system) becomes continually less, and that of family care (the boarding-out system and its modifications, scattered homes, &c.) becomes ever greater. For the same reasons, orphan asylums are undergoing, though very slowly, a transformation similar to that which most foundling hospitals have already experienced. The orphan asylum of the future will merely be: 1, A children’s depot; 2, a children’s hospital; 3, a central station for the supervision of children placed in external care.
Thus, in course of time, alike the Latin system and the Germanic system have been extensively transformed, and as a result of these transformations the two systems have been assimilated to such an extent as to have become almost identical. It is, in fact, almost impossible to point out any notable difference between the modern Germanic and the modern Latin system; and the few differences that still exist are gradually disappearing. The unmistakable tendency of[146] evolution is that these two systems, so divergent in origin, will ultimately be completely assimilated.
Some Modern Methods for the Care of Foundlings.—It is necessary to allude, further, to many modern methods for the care of foundlings, some of which are applicable also in the case of neglected children. These modern forms are—(a) upbringing in agricultural colonies and training ships, (b) rescue homes for children, (c) scattered homes (Kindergruppen-Familiensystem), (d) placing of the child together with its mother in family care.
A rescue home for children is properly an asylum whose aim is to undertake the upbringing of neglected children. These homes are really a by-product of reformatory schools. In fact, the only difference between a rescue home for children and a reformatory school is that children are sent to the latter by a magistrate’s order, but this is not so in the case of a rescue home.
The scattered home system originated in the endeavour to replace the family by the formation of groups. It occupies an intermediate position between institutional care and family care; and it is claimed that it combines some of the advantages of institutional care with the good effects of family life upon the character. The essence of the system is that somewhere in the country, houses are built, or suitable houses rented, in which the children are cared for in small groups. There are from eight to twelve children in one house—that is, such a number as are found in an ordinary large family. Each house is managed by a childless couple of the superior working class, the man being free to go to his work, while the woman devotes her whole time to the children. The children attend the public elementary school, associating freely with the other children; the boys in the home are taught a trade by the man, whilst the girls are taught housework by the woman.
The boarding out of an illegitimate child and its mother is a system also practised in Hungary.
The Care of Foundlings, Wet-Nursing, and Baby-Farming.—The care of foundlings is closely connected with baby-farming and putting children out to nurse. Children completely and permanently abandoned by their relatives are in fact boarded[147] out with nurses or brought up with foster-parents. The principal difference between the Germanic system for the care of foundlings and what is known as baby-farming consists in this, that in the former the children are boarded out by the administrators of the Poor Law, whilst in the latter case it is the relatives of the children who make this arrangement for them. The principal difference between the Latin system for the care of foundlings and baby-farming consists in the fact that in the former case the foundlings are in the first instance received into a foundling hospital, whereas children sent by their relatives to a baby-farm go there direct from their homes.
Speaking generally, children at a baby-farm are younger than those under the care of the Poor Law authorities, for the need of putting the former out to nurse commences with their birth. The mortality of children at a baby-farm is usually greater than that of Poor Law children, supervision in the case of the latter being commonly much more effective. In most countries, State regulation of children under the Poor Law extends only for the first few years of life, and applies only to those boarded out for money; but supervision may extend through the later years of childhood, and even to the attainment of full legal age, and may apply to all the children for whose care the local authority is responsible.
In the countries in which the Latin system for the care of foundlings prevails—in those, that is to say, in which no inquiry into paternity is permitted (for example, in France and Italy)—baby-farming is less prevalent than it is in countries in which inquiry into paternity is permitted. The reason for this is that in these latter countries a much larger proportion of unmarried mothers receive from the natural fathers an allowance for the maintenance of their children, and therefore a much larger proportion of illegitimate children in these countries are farmed out for pay. At the present day, the requirements with which the nurses and foster-parents have to comply in the case of all children (alike those farmed out by their relatives and those boarded out by the local authorities) are much the same in all countries; and there is the same general similarity in the matter of the[148] principles of supervision and in that of the supervising authority. The tendency of evolution is that all the nurses and all the foster-parents should be supervised by the same authority, and in accordance with identical principles.
Institutional Care versus Family Care.—If the child is not cared for in its own home, the question arises, is recourse to be had to institutional care or to family care (close or open care). The following are the objections to institutional care.
(a) It does not readily allow proper attention to be paid to the individuality of each child. The care of the emotional life is a matter of especial difficulty. It is utterly impossible that all the children in an institution should be truly and individually loved. To pay a preference to individual children arouses jealousy. In an institution the children learn nothing about the daily experiences of family life (for example, the difficulties of earning a living, troubles small and great); on the other hand, occurrences which profoundly disturb the life of the family (illness and death, for example) are matters of daily experience in the life of institutions.
(b) In the institution the child never experiences absolute freedom. On the contrary, it feels itself subject to unceasing control.
(c) Epidemic diseases spread very readily.
(d) A few bad children may readily communicate unwholesome ideas and practices to the others.
(e) In institutional life, the children learn nothing of the vital needs of daily life, or of the difficulties of the struggle for existence; and yet it is all the more necessary that they should learn something about these matters, inasmuch as in their subsequent life they will presumably have a hard struggle for their daily bread. Whatever the child really needs, it receives in the institution; thus an idea arises in its mind that there is some higher power which cares for all these things. The child has to make no effort, no sacrifices are exacted from it; in the institution, tests of the child’s power of resistance, such as might strengthen it to meet the temptations of the outer world, are few and far between, for from the temptations of the outer world it is sheltered by the walls of the institution.
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(f) The institution is not adapted to provide for the complete education of a child—for the learning of a trade. It is absolutely necessary that institutional care should be supplemented by work under a master, in a technical school or teaching workshop.
(g) Institutional care is costlier than family care.
(h) Only family care can replace for a child the loss of its own family. Family care is the only natural method of upbringing, whereas the best possible institutional care is purely mechanical, full of defects, and cannot possibly replace a free life. In a sense, the institution is indeed a large family. But in the free life, outside the particular family to which the child belongs, there are thousands of others, communicating and competing with one another. No such competition exists in the institution; the child’s work there is purely mechanical, but as soon as it enters the open world, the child has to seek work, and often fails to find it.
(i) The State lays down the principles in accordance with which the foster-parents must bring up the child, and sees that the foster-parents have access to expert advice concerning every department of the hygiene of childhood. The State insists that whenever necessary the foster-children shall have medical aid, that the children shall attend the elementary school, &c. If the foster-parents apply these principles properly in their care of the foster-children, they are likely to take care that their own children are treated at least equally well. And if, in any community, these principles are applied cordially and intelligently by the foster-parents, it is probable that the other parents of the same community will follow this good example.
(k) Statistical data show, moreover, that family care gives better results than institutional care, alike physically, mentally, and morally.
(l) With regard to the alleged defects of family care (such as that foster-children are less well treated than the foster-parents’ own children, that they are exploited by the foster-parents, that suitable foster-parents are hard to find), these can readily be overcome.
From these considerations it would appear that only in[150] special circumstances is institutional care necessary or desirable. In the case, for instance, of children physically or mentally ill, we cannot dispense with institutional care. Moreover, institutions are necessary as a supplement to the system of family care—institutions having the characteristics of a depot and an asylum. Such depots are indispensable, if only for the reason that orphans immediately after the loss of their parents are in a condition of mingled depression and excitement, and must, therefore, before being boarded with a family, be calmed and strengthened for a time by a sojourn in an institution.
As a result of all these considerations, the tendency of evolution is to replace institutional care by a form of family care in which the foster-parents are supervised from a central depot, which serves also for the temporary institutional care of children needing such care. Whereas formerly institutional upbringing was the dominant method, to-day family upbringing has become of much greater importance.
Supervision of Family Care.—The modern State no longer regards the family care of children by others than their own parents as a purely private matter. A few decades ago, to receive children in this way for pay was an open profession, but it is so no longer. The local authorities regulate the matter in detail, defining very precisely the standard of life of the boarded-out child and the methods of supervision; and, as a result of this intervention, the scandalous mortality attendant upon the old-time baby-farming is now largely a thing of the past. Where children are received in family care for pay, the intention is that these children should have all the advantages of the natural care they would have obtained in their own families. Thus, as far as possible, the child should remain permanently with the same family. In actual fact, a proportion of the children committed to family care do permanently remain with their foster-parents—a proportion are indeed adopted. Since the children are as a rule the offspring of poor parents, and inasmuch as well-to-do people rarely trouble themselves to undertake the upbringing of other people’s children, the foster-parents will themselves usually be poor. But they must not be extremely poor, for if this were so, even though the remuneration were ample,[151] the greater part of the money would be used by them for their own purposes, to the consequent detriment of the child. But the foster-parents usually want to make some profit. In many countries they have to demonstrate that there is no absolute financial necessity for them to receive a boarded-out child. It is as well, in any case, that the social position of the foster-parents should be at least a trifle higher than that of the real parents of the child. Persons in receipt of public assistance are not suitable as foster-parents.
The foster-mother must not have too much to do, apart from her work for the child; and, above all, she should not be employed away from the house. It is necessary that the foster-parents should lead an orderly, decent life, that they should be really fond of children, that they should have a proper knowledge of how to bring up children, and that they should live in a suitable house. The remuneration must be reasonably high. If it is too low, the child will not be properly cared for, will not get enough to eat, will very probably be ill-treated and exploited. It has been statistically demonstrated that the death-rate of boarded-out children is inversely proportional to the amount paid for their care. The foster-parents are supervised by the local authority. Medical practitioners are the chief executive instruments of this supervision. Supervision by members of the laity is inadequate, for these do not pay sufficient attention to hygienic considerations. Voluntary honorary workers are also unsuitable, for the reason that years of experience are requisite to a proper knowledge of the conditions we are considering, and voluntary officers will not face the unpleasantnesses incident to efficient inspection.
It is a very important question whether the family care of children can better be carried out in country districts or in towns. Children who are no longer quite young cannot in any case be sent to the country, for they will already have acquired the usual preference of their class for town life. The following reasons are adduced for preferring family care in the country:—(a) In large towns, or in the neighbourhood of such towns, owing to the high rents, the foster-parents will not have a suitable dwelling. (b) The children must be kept at a distance from the dangerous influences of town life, and, it[152] may be, also from the influence of undesirable relatives living in the town. (c) We ought to counteract the drift of population into the town, and we can do this by sending these children back to the country. (d) In the interest of the agricultural districts, which suffer from insufficient labour, it is desirable that these children should become agricultural labourers.
In answer to these arguments, the following points have to be considered:—(a) When the children grow up, they will be influenced by the general drift from the country towards the towns, and whereas they will probably have learned no skilled trade in the country, the great majority of them will fall into the ranks of the unskilled labourers. (b) From the hygienic standpoint, it is important to remember that the town population is more intelligent, and that in towns medical aid is more readily available. Unquestionably, in the country, the only foster-parents available would be agricultural labourers and other manual labourers. In any case, this question cannot be decided on general principles, but only on a consideration of the needs of the individual case, with especial reference to the question whether the child shows an inclination towards agricultural work or manufacturing industry.
Subsidiary Aims of the Care of Foundlings.—The care of foundlings is utilised by the civil order for the attainment of its ends. This system renders possible the upbringing of submissive proletarians, immunised against socialist ideas, who can be enlisted in the reserve army of labour. From the very earliest times the existence of foundling hospitals has been justified on the ground that through their instrumentality persons were brought up who could devote their time, their working powers, and their life wholly to the State. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, children under the care of the English Poor Law were hired out to the factory owners. In Germany, among the arguments for the introduction of coercive reformatory education, it was pointed out that by this means cheaper labour could be provided for those agricultural districts in which labour was scarce. In Hungary, where a few years ago modern laws for child-protection were[153] passed, it is constantly pointed out as the task of child-protection to bring up the children as “good patriots.” For this reason children are boarded out with “patriotic” foster-parents only, and in districts where a strong Hungarian nationalist feeling prevails, boarded-out children are hardly ever to be found. In the history of this institution, we encounter again and again the idea that foundlings should be brought up as soldiers, sailors, or colonial pioneers. Napoleon the First wished to make use of foundlings for recruiting the army, and especially for the marines. He did much to secure that in every arrondissement in France, foundling hospitals with turn-tables should be instituted; and he even arranged for the foundation of such institutions in the various countries he conquered. Quite recently the idea has once more recurred to utilise foundling hospitals and orphan asylums as recruiting grounds for the army and the navy, and with this end in view to combine these institutions with military and naval training schools.
For the attainment of these ends, the civil order has laid down the principle that from the first the children shall be brought up with an eye to the conditions awaiting them in the future—hard work, deprivation, and poverty. But this principle is only partially sound. Undoubtedly the child must be habituated to regular work, for only in this way will work be other than distasteful. But the child should be taught in such a way as to safeguard it from the lot of the great mass of unskilled labourers. The standard of life of boarded-out children should be a good one; for only if the child has been accustomed to such a standard, will it be spurred, after it had become independent, to secure the same standard by its own exertions. In the case of boarded-out children who have already begun to work for wages, the attempt on the part of employers to pay them at a specially low rate must be strenuously resisted. The reason given in such cases by the employers, that these children need much more attention than other young workpeople, is invalid. The wage in such cases should be the standard wage of the district for other workers doing the same class of work, as otherwise the young people feel exploited and oppressed. The rightful aim[154] is thus to lift foundlings out of the lower strata into the higher strata of wage-labour.
The Tendency of Evolution.—(a) Baby-farming is distinguished from the care of foundlings only by the fact that in the former the children are entrusted to foster-parents by their relatives instead of by the local authorities. (b) The various systems for the care of foundlings tend to become continually more similar. The general tendency in every case is to have recourse to a system of family care supervised by the same administrative authority. (c) There is a tendency to assimilate the upbringing of neglected and of criminal children, and to adopt for both the same methods of family care and the same kind of supervision. (d) The same remarks apply in the case of children who have become legally liable to a coercive reformatory education. (e) In course of time the supervision of the foster-parents—indifferently whether the children committed to their care are materially or morally neglected or criminal children, and whether they are boarded out by the children’s relatives or by the local authorities—comes to be exercised by the same administrative authority and in accordance with the same principles.
To-day, baby-farming represents the first stage of evolution, the Latin system for the care of foundlings the second, the Germanic system the third, coercive reformatory education the fourth, the education of criminal children the fifth. In a comparatively short time all the different branches of child-protection will come to stand at the same level, and in so far as they relate to children neglected by their relatives, in whatever manner, they will all take the same form of family care, under a unified centralised control, and supervised locally by the same administrative authority.