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 unloved or orphaned child in the nineteenth century? For as oftentimes as has been written about the crime of abortion and infanticide, equally oftentimes as been said against forced maternity, marital fuck up, and womans inadequacy of control over her own body, all circumstances resulting in unwanted pregnancy and unwanted children. Such circumstances all stemmed from funny family, social, or health issues, with no one cause resulting in the renunciation 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 not 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 as well as abandoned. Deaths r elated to the Civil War also dramatically increased the numbers of orphaned children. Within the pages of The Revolution, it is asked Women who atomic number 18 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 old (Simpson 136). make out of the orphans (and also the sick, the poor, the elderly, and the mentally ill) was first the debt instrument 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. for each one overseer was responsible for finding funds f or children and more commonly, 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. orphan children were first treated in almshouses, first established in Philadelphia in 1731 (7). Poorhouses, workhouses, and almshouses, all essentially the same institution, housed both adults and children without homes. Residents were seen as nearly dissolve sources of labor, working in sweatshops or nearby mines in the case of some(prenominal) British poorhouses (5).