Abandoned in Brussels, delivered in Paris: long-distance transports of unwanted children in the eighteenth century.

The study uses examinations and other documents produced in the course of a large-scale investigation undertaken by the central authorities of the Austrian Netherlands in the 1760s on the transportation of about thirty children from Brussels to the Parisian foundling house by a Brussels shoemaker and his wife. It combines the rich archival evidence with sparse indications in the literature to demonstrate that long-distance transports of abandoned children were a common but historiographically neglected by-product of the ambiguities of foundling policies in eighteenth-century Europe and provides insight into the functioning of the associated networks and the motives of parents, doctors, midwives, transporters, and local officials involved.

[Three contracts signed by the apothecary Nicolas Houel in 1586]. / Trois contrats passés avec Nicolas Houel, intendant et gouverneur de la Maison de la charité chrétienne en 1586.

Nicolas Houel famous apothecary founder of the House of the Christian Charity, near Paris, in the 16th Century, welcomed poor children for six years. The author has found two reception contracts and a settlement act to the Foundation signed by Houel in 1586.

Joint physical custody and neighborhood friendships in middle childhood.

Almost half of first marriages end in divorce, which in turn may produce joint physical custody arrangements. Seen by many states to be in the best interest of the child, joint physical custody is increasingly common. Yet much is unknown about its consequences for children. This article considers how joint physical custody arrangements affect children's neighborhood friendships, an important component of child well-being because of their contributions to social and cognitive development. Thirteen parents and 17 children (aged 5­11) in 10 families, selected via convenience and snowball sampling, participated in semistructured interviews. The findings suggest that joint physical custody arrangements do not imperil children's neighborhood friendships; indeed, most children and parents interviewed voiced contentment in this area.

[Forms of custody of children placed in Switzerland: ambiguous policies, resistance, and conflicting objectives (1850-1950).]. / Les formes de garde des enfants placs en Suisse: politiques ambiguës, resistances et objectifs contradictoires (1850-1950) .

In the past, many European countries were faced with the problem of providing care for boarded-out children. And very often the policies implemented up to the middle of the twentieth century were essentially similar and thus similarly inadequate. The problem with boarding out is that it was a measure in response to widely varying situations, not only in respect of the illegitimate as well as the legitimate children concerned, but also with regard to the reasons which led to boarding out. Orphans after the First World War with no relatives who could take them in formed a minority, and in several Swiss cantons the legitimate children outnumbered the illegitimate ones by far. Up to the First World War, the age group concerned was mostly that of children from birth to 14 years. There was considerable ambivalence in the motives leading to the boarding out of children, because they were the result of two conflicting concepts. On the one hand, the parents or the mother of an illegitimate child had to out-place her child/children because the mother had to go out to work, as was often the case with the spread of industrialisation and the frequently inadequate income of the working class. On the other hand, the local Assistance Board was often ready to split up poorer families and to take away their children with the argument that the family environment was considered morally harmful for their upbringing according to the contemporary view. Both parents and the local Assistance Board often chose the cheapest solution for different reasons. In numerous cases the children were placed with farming families quite unable to offer a proper upbringing and children were taken in only because they represented a supplementary source of income and an addition to the workforce. For the local authorities, be they rural or urban, in some cantons even during the interwar period, the auctioning of the children to families living in other parts of Switzerland was a frequent stratagem in order to pay the lowest possible boarding fees, and the level of these fees decreased enormously the older the child was since his/her work capacity increased over time. In most cantons, one of the main problems with boarding out was the totally inadequate supervision of the families to which the children were entrusted, either because of the geographical distance between the local authority and the children, or because of the inadequacy of the supervisory staff, often benevolent females with no clear rules existing for judging the adequacy of the entrusted families, or due to the general lack of interest for the destiny of the children.

Growing up without parents: socialisation and gender relations in orphaned-child-headed households in rural Zimbabwe.

The most distressing consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic's impact on children has been the development of child-headed households (CHHs). Child 'only' households challenge notions of the ideal home, family, and 'normal' childhood, as well as undermining international attempts to institute children's rights. The development of these households raises practical questions about how the children will cope without parental guidance during their childhood and how this experience will affect their adulthood. Drawing on ethnographic research with five child heads and their siblings, this article explores how orphaned children living in 'child only' households organise themselves in terms of household domestic and paid work roles, explores the socialisation of children by children and the negotiation of teenage girls' movement. Further, it examines whether the orphaned children are in some way attempting to 'mimic' previously existing family/household gender relations after parental death. The study showed that all members in the CHHs irrespective of age and gender are an integral part of household labour including food production. Although there is masculinisation of domestic chores in boys 'only' households, roles are distributed by age. On the other hand, households with a gender mix tended to follow traditional gender norms. Conflict often arose when boys controlled teenage girls' movement and sexuality. There is a need for further research on CHHs to better understand orphans' experiences, and to inform policy interventions.

Welfare impact of a ban on child labor.

This article presents a new rationale for imposing restrictions on child labor. In a standard overlapping generation model where parental altruism results in transfers that children allocate to consumption and education, the Nash-Cournot equilibrium results in suboptimal levels of parental transfers and does not maximize the average level of utility of currently living agents. A ban on child labor decreases children's income and generates an increase in parental transfers bringing their levels closer to the optimum, raising children's welfare as well as average welfare in the short run and in the long run. Moreover, the inability to work allows children to allocate more time to education, and it leads to an increase in human capital. Besides, to increase transfers, parents decrease savings and hence physical capital accumulation. When prices are flexible, these effects diminish the positive welfare impact of the ban on child labor.

Algerian orphans and colonial Christianity in Algeria, 1866-1939.

This article considers the exceptional fate of the orphan survivors of the great Algerian demographic crisis of the late 1860s who subsequently converted to Catholicism. Using a prosopographical approach, this study seeks to highlight the complexities of national identity in France and to explore some of the racial tensions emerging in Algeria in the late nineteenth century.

The determination of child custody.

This article reviews briefly the history of child custody decision making and describes current custodial arrangements in the United States. It examines both the manner in which parents and courts make decisions regarding custody and access, and the changes in visiting patterns in recent decades. The author discusses the impact of reforms in the law and the implementation of newer dispute resolution and educational interventions, and then makes recommendations for policy and practice.

Wives and mothers like ourselves? Exploring white women's intervention in the politics of race, 1920s-1940s.

This paper takes the issue of the removal of Aboriginal children, and the broader white anxiety over the 'half-caste problem' which underpinned the policy, to explore white women reformers' intervention in the politics of race in the years 1920-40. In these years middle-class women's citizenship was based on maternalism and the defence of motherhood. At the same time the national feminist lobby, the Australian Federation of Women Voters, joined the public debate about the 'Aboriginal problem'. In this context it is necessary to ask: What was the feminist view of Aboriginal women's status? Were they considered 'wives and mothers' like themselves, as Louisa Lawson suggested in the 1890s? What was their view of the 'half-caste problem' and the 'absorption proposal' formulated to solve it? By asking such questions I hope to modify the current feminist historiographical view of white women reformers as 'pro-Aboriginal' and 'radical' and their policies as challenging White Australia in these years.

Por uma cruzada regeneradora: a cidade do Rio de Janeiro como canteiro de ações tutelares e educativas da infância menorizada na década de 1920 / For a regenerative campaign: the city of the Rio de Janeiro as a place of tutelaries and educative actions of the tailed assessments childhood in the 1920s

Como síntese do país, a capital deveria projetar imagens simuladas de uma realidade que embora não fosse, desejava-se construir por meio de seu traçado de ruas, esquinas, praças, monumentos e, fundamentalmente, de programas e iniciativas direcionadas aos seus habitantes. Com um extenso conjunto de medidas assistênciais, pedagógicas e disciplinares, os governos republicanos procuraram trasnformar o comportamento carioca, instituindo na capital da malandragem, da boemia e do arrivismo, novas práticas sociais. Desse modo, a década de 1920 foi marcada pela montagem de estruturas de atendimento à infância desprotegida da sorte, abandonada e delinqüente. Partindo dessa compreensão, a capital do país foi perspectivada como contexto de iniciativas modelares no campo da proteção e assistência à infância. Sendo assim, o exercício de análise aqui proposto tenciona discorrer acerca das políticas de intervenção social direcionadas à infância menorizada pelo campo jurídico, durante a década de 1920. Para isto, este texto organiza-se a partir de um tríplice objetivo. Primeiro, discorrer sobre as proposições que alicerçaram as medidas assistenciais de caráter científico, percebendo as concepções atinentes ao processo 'judicialização' da infância pelo campo jurídico; segundo, empreender um esforço problematizador dos sentidos atribuídos à infância menorizada num processo que visou firmar determinada identidade e pertencimento social para ela; terceiro, e último, lançar luz sobre as iniciativas jurídicas que, formuladas a partir de 1921, com a Lei Orçamentária Federal, implementaram reformas e proposições tendentes a agenciar ações tutelares e educativas à infância abandonada e delinqüente na cidade-capital.

Por uma cruzada regeneradora: a cidade do Rio de Janeiro como canteiro de ações tutelares e educativas da infância menorizada na década de 1920 / For a regenerative campaign: the city of the Rio de Janeiro as a place of tutelaries and educative actions of the tailed assessments childhood in the 1920s

Como síntese do país, a capital deveria projetar imagens simuladas de uma realidade que embora não fosse, desejava-se construir por meio de seu traçado de ruas, esquinas, praças, monumentos e, fundamentalmente, de programas e iniciativas direcionadas aos seus habitantes. Com um extenso conjunto de medidas assistênciais, pedagógicas e disciplinares, os governos republicanos procuraram trasnformar o comportamento carioca, instituindo na capital da malandragem, da boemia e do arrivismo, novas práticas sociais. Desse modo, a década de 1920 foi marcada pela montagem de estruturas de atendimento à infância desprotegida da sorte, abandonada e delinqüente. Partindo dessa compreensão, a capital do país foi perspectivada como contexto de iniciativas modelares no campo da proteção e assistência à infância. Sendo assim, o exercício de análise aqui proposto tenciona discorrer acerca das políticas de intervenção social direcionadas à infância menorizada pelo campo jurídico, durante a década de 1920. Para isto, este texto organiza-se a partir de um tríplice objetivo. Primeiro, discorrer sobre as proposições que alicerçaram as medidas assistenciais de caráter científico, percebendo as concepções atinentes ao processo 'judicialização' da infância pelo campo jurídico; segundo, empreender um esforço problematizador dos sentidos atribuídos à infância menorizada num processo que visou firmar determinada identidade e pertencimento social para ela; terceiro, e último, lançar luz sobre as iniciativas jurídicas que, formuladas a partir de 1921, com a Lei Orçamentária Federal, implementaram reformas e proposições tendentes a agenciar ações tutelares e educativas à infância abandonada e delinqüente na cidade-capital. (AU)