Abortion in context: What was the fate of an unwanted or orphaned child in the nineteenth century? :: Essays Papers

Abortion in context What was the fate of an unwanted or orphaned boor in the nineteenth snow? For as much as has been written astir(predicate) the crime of abortion and infanticide, equally much as been said against forced maternity, marital rape, and womans lack of control over her own body, all circumstances resulting in unwanted pregnancy and unwanted children. much(prenominal) circumstances all stemmed from curious family, social, or health issues, with no one cause resulting in the abandonment of a child. A lack of knowledge about both sanitation and about womens health resulted in the deaths of mothers during birth. General poverty and migration from farms to city centers made large families more difficult to support financially. Giving up a child because it could non be economically supported by its family was a common occurrence. As abortion became more stigmatized and criminalized, children who were the product of rape or wedlock were besides abandoned. Deaths related to the Civil War also dramatically increased the numbers of orphaned children. Within the pages of The Revolution, it is asked Women who are in the last stages of consumption, who know that their offspring must be puny, suffering, neglected orphans, are still compelled to submit to maternity, and dying in childbirth, are their husbands ever condemned? Oh, no (2)Stemming from models developed in Rome under Marcus Aurelius and Florences Innocenti, orphans were first nursed by peasant women, then adopted or apprenticed by the time they were seven or eight years white-haired (Simpson 136). Care of the orphans (and also the sick, the poor, the elderly, and the mentally ill) was first the responsibility of the church, but with increased legislation, the responsibility gradually fell under the state (Simpson 137). Pennsylvania passed such a poor law in 1705, establishing an Overseer of the Poor for each township. Each overseer was responsible for finding funds for children and more commo nly, for finding positions of servitude or apprenticeship (7). Such a model of short-term care followed by adoption, apprenticeship, or indentured servitude became the standard for dealing with orphaned children. The development of specific orphanages or child asylums, however, did not come until later in the nineteenth century. Orphaned children were first treated in almshouses, first established in Philadelphia in 1731 (7). Poorhouses, workhouses, and almshouses, all essentially the selfsame(prenominal) institution, housed both adults and children without homes. Residents were seen as nearly free sources of labor, working in sweatshops or nearby mines in the case of several British poorhouses (5).