Services Aux Enfants Et Adultes

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Panter-Brick, Catherine (2000)

Nobody’s children? A reconsideration of child abandonment

Services aux enfants et adultes

Prescott-Russell

Services to Children and Adults

Chapter synopsis and review

By Raymond Lemay

April 2005

Panter-Brick, Catherine (2000). Nobody’s children? A reconsideration of child abandonment. In C. Panter-Brick and M. T. Smith (eds) Abandoned Children. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

This is the introductory chapter to a book on child abandonment where it is reviewed historically and in the third world.

The author points out that ‘abandonment’ is a word that has very different meanings at different times and in different places in the world. Abandonment evokes powerful emotional overtones but then again when one surveys the experience of ‘abandonment’ historically and around the world, one sees that the experience of ‘abandonment’ for children is very different from time to time and place to place.

From a Western perspective we tend to view ‘abandonment’ in a variety of ways but mostly from our own value system. From a modern Western perspective, a) childhood is viewed in terms of care and protection, b) children are raised in families, thus, there is the whole element of domesticity and, finally, c) children are viewed as dependent upon adults for their well-being and even their survival.

There are three major forms of ‘abandonment’ which includes foundlings and the organized and systematic ‘abandonment’ of surplus children. There are children who are orphaned because their parents die or disappear, there are children who are victims of war, there are child prostitution, and there are children who are raised in the streets in many places in the third world. All of these different situations are referred to in various ways but very often ‘abandonment’ is the catchall term that describes these various situations.

In an interesting paragraph (p. 5), the author relates Philippe Ariès’s thesis that childhood is a modern invention and that in fact in medieval Europe there was no concept of childhood. The author disputes this but suggests that what Ariès probably meant was that the concept of childhood in the Middle Ages was very simply not the same as ours.

The author then goes on to describe what other concepts of childhood might include.

First, the cultural pattern of children raised in domesticity is by no means universal especially where continuity is viewed different. In fact, children in the past and in other areas of the world experience a great deal of mobility; in some societies it is quite normative for children to be placed early on at schools, with other families or for work. Thus, these practices enlarge kinship; indeed, we are told that in some cultures “mother-infant relationships are deliberately weakened to strengthen wider social networks” (p. 7).

A second concept that is reconsidered in other parts of the world is this notion of dependent child. In fact, throughout the centuries and in most places in the world, children are usually called upon to make an economic contribution to the family and to the household economy. “In contemporary societies throughout the developing world, child employment (paid or unpaid) is a widespread feature of the lives of the poor. In many places, work for children between the ages of six and twelve plays a major part in their development, being vital to the child’s acquisition of skills, sense of self-worth, and family relationships. It is not play or schoolwork which takes precedence but economically productive labour” (p. 8).

Thus, much of the current Western debate on child ‘abandonment’ is framed in terms of a moral discourse where Western norms are the starting point “from this standpoint, children who are not at home and nurtured appear forsaken, lost or deviant. ‘Abandoned’ street children, exiles, refugees from war zones, and children bonded to virtual slavery or prostitution are deemed to have lost their childhood. The international media feed this portrayal by painting an especially stark picture, of innocent and vulnerable child victims of stolen childhoods in refugee camps and war zones” (p. 9).

However, international standards are now being established which will universalize how children should be treated. Some of the work accomplished with the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child, though fairly vague, does begin to address the creation of an international normative standard of treatment of children; but much even in these documents is left to local interpretation. For instance, one thing that isn’t made clear in such international work is how children should be viewed. For instance, such a document starts with the notion of the best interest of the child, however, such interest will, of course, be interpreted according to one’s own cultural preconceptions.

Panter-Brick considers these homogenizing efforts, at least for now as being very ineffective. She goes on to document other ways that the Western World very probably misconceives childhood. “… it tends to be assumed, against the evidence, that children are passive and dependent. Thus Boyden (1994) has vigorously challenged welfare interventions as relying on a mistakenly universalist model of childhood that . . . characterizes children as passive victims rather than active survivors” (p. 11). Then the author goes on to describe what children’s perspectives are on issues of ‘abandonment’ and what this literature, and certainly the point being made by the author argues, is that children are incredibly resilient and this resiliency has to change how we view childhood. Children can no longer be viewed as wholly dependent, passive victims, and best nurtured in domestic tranquility. In fact, the experience of most children in the third world countervails such a position. Given the remarkably difficult situations that many children grow up in, survive and actually thrive in, one had to start from a position of resilience to better describe the reality of childhood.

This also suggests that any of the behavioral aberrations that are described in 3rdWorld children are better interpreted as positive deviancy; in other words, such behaviours are positive adaptations to very trying circumstances and are much more a demonstration of resilience than of pathology. Thus, the author suggests that we should move away from concepts of child vulnerability “in favour of views of children as resilient survivors who gain support from extensive social networks” (p. 12). Later on, the author comments that “depicting children as helpless victims does little justice to their coping strategies” (p. 12).

The author then goes on to introduce the chapters in the book and the subject matter that is covered in the book. The first part of the book reviews the literature on foundlings which is described as a Western tradition inspired by Roman Catholic culture. There are a number of chapters in the book that deal with the history of the European foundling system. In many societies, surplus children who were ‘abandoned’ died: they were exposed to die because there was no way for families to be able to deal with them in the short term. However, the great Christian innovation was the foundling system where a parent was able to anonymously ‘abandon’ a child at a designated place in a convent or hospital where a given religious order would raise the child (oblation). The system was based on an understanding of anonymity but where “in practice many foundlings were tagged with signs which enabled both parents, if they wished, to approach officials and trace their children” (p. 14).

The foundling system was a very elaborate system that had four implications. The first is that it provided parents with the assurance that the baby that was to be ‘abandoned’ was to be raised in responsible hands. Secondly, foundlings were of great value and if they were not reclaimed by their family, foundlings, as they grew older, would eventually be conscripted into the labour force or even their army. The foundling system created a market for wet-nurses where mother’s milk became an important commodity. Finally, foundlings had an economic value: surplus children were redistributed to families who required extra children to do chores and work on the family farm or the family property. Of course, as we read such a description with our modern sensibilities, we sort of cringe; however, the author assures us that “foundlings were not so different from many other children; families customarily transferred rights and responsibilities over their children to persons outside the family when, for example, they placed them for employment” (p. 16). The author concludes that foundlings were far from being nobody’s children or ‘abandoned’ children; quite the opposite, the foundling system was an elaborate societal response to ensure that such children had a place in the community.

The second part of the book reviews children who were orphaned or separated from their families because of war or accidents and so on. The chapters in this book show that by and large, at least in the third world, orphaned children are well supported by informal systems and natural supports. Indeed, we are told that “if indigenous coping mechanisms were to be undermined by arrangements sponsored by outsiders, the children in question would indeed be at risk of becoming nobody’s children” (p. 17).

The third and final part of the book describes the contemporary experience of street children. On the one hand, the experience of child prostitution in Thailand is described and found to be quite different from that portrayed in the media. “…contrary to prevalent belief, the mothers cannot easily be accused of abandoning their children even when they sell them like chattels in the sex market as young as eight years old” (p. 19). Later, the author continues “the children continue to live at home, and in most cases they are following in their mothers’ footsteps. Montgomery shows that ties between family members are strong and the values of reciprocity and filial duty are high. By remaining at home and working as prostitutes children fulfill their filial obligations. The fact that prostitution is fitted into the normal cultural framework means that there is no sense that anyone is abandoning the other: no rupture of relationships, no breach of responsibility and no sense of children being out of place” (p. 19). Situations of street children in Brazil are also quite compelling. Some children, of course, return to their mothers every night whereas others are completely disconnected from their families. Of course, the two situations are quite different; however once again what is described is the incredible resilience of children and their capacity to cope in incredibly trying circumstances.

Conclusion

All in all, this chapter and certainly this book seems to suggest that we would be wise to revise our view of childhood. A resilience focus would suggest that children are competent, agentic and capable of withstanding incredible challenges and trauma. Such a view of childhood has immense implications for human service policy whether for child protection, children’s mental health, education, and the family.

Raymond Lemay

April 7, 2005

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