Rachel G. Fuchs

Child Abandonment in European History: A Symposium:

EDITORS’ N O T E 7% symposium article is based on a roundtable discussion at the annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, December 1989, in Washington, D. C. Ilie subject of child abandonment is attracting increasing attention among European historians and has been explored in recent booklength publication by several of the roundtable participants as well as other scholars. Although each part of the symposium article has been edited f o r purposes of integration, each, in the main, continues to reflect the author5 involvement in the session as a commentator on recent publications in the field, or, in Professor RanselS case, as a respondent to the comments. Louise A. Tilly is Professor of History and Sociology, and Chair of the Conitnittee on Historial Studies, New School f o r Social Research. Rachel G. Fuchs is Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University. David I. Kertzer is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College. David L. Ransel is Professor of History at Indiana University and Editor of the American Historical Review. -

Legislation, poverty, and child-abandonment in nineteenth-century Paris.

Legislation, Poverty, and Child-Abandonment in Nineteenth-Century Paris Women in different societies, cultures, and times have sought ways of coping with an unwanted child for whom they could not, or would not, provide. Although the problem of the disposition of unwanted children usually had been associated with increased industrialization and urbanization, recent work has shown that the problem was both a rural and urban one that transcended geographical and national boundaries. Across countries and centuries, some women have always wanted, or found it necessary, to part with their babies. In the nineteenth century they rarely practiced infanticide. Far more widespread than infanticide, and indeed obviating the need for it, was the practice of having an infant fed and raised by someone else-a form of child abandonment. Demographic and socioeconomic factors, as well as religious and governmental policies, influenced womens coping strategies and the forms of child abandonment.1

Seduction, Paternity, and the Law in Fin de Siècle France*

Jeanne Capbourg gave birth in Paris on December 12, 1908, to a daughter, Andree Marie. Two weeks short of her child’s fifth birthday, on November 27, 1913, she went to court to obtain 70 francs a month in child support from the putative father, Guislains, and an indemnity of 2,000 francs in damages for his breaking a marriage promise. Guislains objected because the newly enacted law of November 16, 1912, stipulated that paternity suits for child support had to be filed within two years from the child’s birth, or from the time the father stopped supporting the child, or from when the parents stopped living together. Guislains maintained that he had never lived with Capbourg nor participated in rearing the child. Guislains further insisted that he did not owe Capbourg damages for a broken marriage promise because there never was such a promise. The judge, however, took into consideration Guislains’s letters. In the earliest one, written to Capbourg’s grandmother in 1911, Guislains mentioned the “unfortunate” birth of the baby, praised Capbourg’s morality and said that “she has always worked very honestly and never went out with other young men in Paris except me.” He wrote that he was pleased that “she has the good fortune to fall back on a family who did not abandon her and who have made it a point of honor to concern themselves with her until this misfortune should be remedied, which will take place a short time from now.” In this letter Guislains announced his resolve to “redress the unfortunate birth of the child.” The judge decided that there had been no binding marriage promise. Moreover, because she was five years older than Guislains and could not prove that he coerced her into sexual relations, the judge ruled against Capbourg’s request for damages for “fraudulent seduction” and a broken marriage promise. He

INTRODUCTION TO THE FORUM ON THE CHANGING FACES OF PARENTHOOD

Parents are praised and vilified, damned if they do and damned if they don’t behave in expected ways. More often than not, however, society at large pointed to the mothers, not the fathers, as those most responsible for parenting—both good and bad. For centuries, the social culture gave mothers the essential role in the daily lives of young children and either commended mothers for their nurturing or condemned them for their neglect. It is not surprising, therefore, that until recently, most scholarly historical literature on parenthood has focused on women as mothers, either as part of two-parent conjugal families or as single mothers—never married, formerly married, or cohabiting without marriage. Some recent historical studies have also focused on adoption or tutelle in both the early modern and modern periods, either with or without the structure and influence of the state. Historians have less often factored in the fathers either as genitors or as the pères de famille. Fathers, according to popular belief, were the dominant and powerful patriarchs, in charge of law and order in the family, either dispensing largesse or else making the children and mothers quiver in their boots; they were not responsible for actual daily child rearing. The men were essential to making the babies that the natalist movements encouraged but in some respects were portrayed only as heads of households, with less of a moral and emotional role in the daily lives of their children than mothers. Moral issues surrounding parenthood have been the focus of social criticism and reform movements from the early modern through the modern periods, whether writers were discussing parenthood within or outside marriage. In the language of the laws and of social commentators, the desire to govern the morality of mothers and protect the property of fathers loomed large. To a great extent, these three articles, covering a longue durée of French parenthood from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, break the discussion away from morality and property. They analyze what parenthood meant not only in a cultural time and place but also what it meant to the individual mothers and fathers. The authors, Christopher Corley, Jennifer Popiel, and Leslie Tuttle, place different faces on what parenthood meant for men and women but also show the continuities of much of what lay behind the changing features.

Crimes against children in nineteenth-century France

Abuse of children is not entirely a modern phenomenon but the definition and classification of abusive practices has changed. Modern concepts of child abuse date only from the 1880s in France. Child abuse in twentieth-century terms of emotional and physical assault, neglect, abandonment, and sexual molestation was not considered a crime during most of the past century. Prior to the 1880s, only two acts, abortion and infanticide, constituted crimes against children. Child abandonment, rather than a crime, was the state supported, societally acceptable alternative to abortion and infanticide. After abandonment, malnourishment and neglect of these children, even to the point of death, likewise were not crimes. With changes in attitudes of the 1880s, parental neglect, assault, and starvation of children became defined as child abuse as did perceived immoral behavior of the parents such as habitual drunkenness and debauchery. Under these new definitions of abuse, state officials could deprive parents of their legal rights and make the children wards of the state for their own protection. The state becamein loco parentis. This essay explores the changing perceptions of child abuse, and the increasing state intervention for the care of abused children after the 1880s.

Paternity, Progeny, and Property: Family Honor in the Late Nineteenth Century

‘Honor is a masculine concept,’ Robert Nye has eloquently argued. ‘It has traditionally regulated relations among men, summed up the prevailing ideals of manliness, and marked the boundaries of masculine comportment … Women had no real place in this system of honor. They were only permitted to safeguard their sexual honor, which in truth belonged to their husbands, fathers, and brothers, who were ultimately responsible for its integrity and defense.’1 Building on these important concepts, this chapter explores notions of honor, masculinity, progeny, and property embodied in a man’s legal actions to disavow children born to his wife in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also demonstrates that although paternity suits were illegal, unwed mothers still had some legal and honorable recourse against men who had dishonored them. They used tort law and sued men for damages resulting from fraudulent seduction and a resulting baby and asserted their rights as adult human beings. Men had been using tort law for decades when another man materially wronged them. By using tort law in courts, just as men had done, and by blaming men for damaging them, women attempted to restore their lost integrity, self-respect, and status in their community, thereby broadening the field of female honor. Both categories of legal action involved men’s denial of paternity and the honor (or dishonor) in sexual relations between individual men and women.