Age structuring and the lives of abandoned children
- 1 January 1999
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in The History of the Family
- Vol. 4 (1) , 5-15
- https://doi.org/10.1016/s1081-602x(99)80262-0
Abstract
The article analyzes age structuring in foundling homes in Italian cities, and shows how the authorities who founded and ran the homes applied age criteria differently in different places. The age of the child was an important criterion for determining how long authorities rendered payments to foster parents, as well as when children were judged to have become economically independent. Variation was considerable. Payments to foster parents differed in size and timing throughout the areas examined. Boys were judged to have become independent earlier than girls. Those who never married often extended their foundling status into old age. The existence of such differing thresholds was linked to relative wealth of institutions and to their location—urban or rural, North or South—and had dramatic consequences for people involved.Keywords
This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Measurement of Age, Age Structuring, and the Life CourseAnnual Review of Sociology, 1997
- Growing up as an abandoned child in nineteenth-century ItalyThe History of the Family, 1997