THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance

by John Boswell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 20, 1988

A moving yet scholarly study of the widespread ancient and medieval practice of abandoning unwanted children. Conditions of life in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, Boswell (History/Yale) shows, were such that families and individuals often found themselves burdened with children for whom they had no means of providing. A poor family might have more months than it could feed; a rich family might need to limit the number of heirs to maintain the integrity of its estate; and illegitimate children sprang from illicit unions and had to be disposed of somehow. Boswell makes clear that the abandonment or sale of children was a perfectly legal, accepted procedure, but one that gave rise to ambivalent feelings: on the part of desperate parents who left their baby in the marketplace or at the church door to be picked up and cared for by ""the kindness of strangers'; and on the part of foster-parents who took in children without knowing their parentage. Boswell humanizes his study with heart-rending case histories, such as that of the ""Nun of Watton,"" who was cruelly tortured when she became pregnant. At the end of the period surveyed here, the modern pattern of impersonal institutional solutions to social problems emerged, as unwanted offspring were consigned to foundling homes--seemingly benign establishments where many children died as a result of unhygenic conditions. A major work on a fascinating and disturbing social theme, and backed by documentation that almost equals the text in bulk.

Pub Date: Feb. 20, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION