_Causes of the Great Mortality of Illegitimate Children._--Owing to causes which come into operation immediately or shortly after birth (syphilis, marasmus, congenital debility, &c.), a much larger percentage of illegitimate children succumb than of legitimate children. The mother returns to work almost immediately after the birth of her child; usually her work takes her away from home, but if otherwise, it is almost certain to be work which will prevent her giving proper care to her child. Hence the great majority of unmarried mothers are forced to separate from their children almost immediately after the birth of the latter. In many cases, the mother does not even commit her child to a foundling hospital, or entrust it to a foster mother, but she kills it or exposes it immediately after birth. It is well known that infanticide and the exposing of infants are almost exclusively the work of unmarried mothers; and in a considerable proportion of cases, criminal abortion is the outcome of an attempt on the part of an unmarried woman to conceal the fact that she has been impregnated.
Baby-farming is in actual practice nothing but a cruel method of infanticide--a method whose causation is apparent on brief consideration. It has been pointed out that the great majority of unmarried mothers belong to a social stratum in which the average income is extremely low. A maid-servant receives at best [in Germany and Austria] an annual wage of from £10 to £15, a female factory-hand from £25 to £30. The maintenance of an infant, if the elementary principles of the hygiene of childhood are to be observed, and if the foster-parents are to make any profit at all, costs at the very least £15 a year. The mere nutriment of a child during the first year of life costs 4d. per day, or a little more than £6 per annum. When allowance is made for house-room, clothing, and necessary incidental expenses, we reach a minimal total of £10 to £11. How is it possible for the average unmarried mother to find the sum asked by the foster-parents? Those who, as foster-parents, assume the charge of an illegitimate child, cannot reckon on the child’s remaining permanently in their care, and ultimately becoming a useful member of the family. The mother’s payments are scanty and irregular. Her intentions may be good at the outset, and perhaps she has not yet completely exhausted her savings. At first too, perhaps, the father gives, or at least promises, a little pecuniary aid. But when the child is out of sight, his willingness to make sacrifices on its behalf soon wanes. Nothing more is heard of the father. The mother is perhaps out of work for a time, and a fresh pregnancy may ensue. The foster-parents know very well that if this particular child dies, they will readily find another to be entrusted to their care. Sometimes the mother’s own interest in the life of her child fades. How, indeed, can she continue to love it, when it is kept at a distance from her, and when to provide the money needed for its maintenance demands the greatest possible sacrifices? Why should she not desire the child’s death, when this would not merely remove a difficulty from her own path, but might well be regarded as the best possible thing for the child itself, ailing and in lack of proper and loving care? Thus there is often a tacit understanding between the mother and the foster-mother, that the child’s life shall be as short as possible. Unfortunately in such cases it is rarely possible to punish the foster-parents, since in the case of infants it is so difficult to determine precisely where ignorance, stupidity, and poverty end and infanticide by deliberate neglect begins. The law rightly prescribes severe penalties for infanticide; but we may well ask whether it is worse for a mother to suffocate her child immediately after its birth, or, by the lack of proper care, to inflict upon the infant a more tedious but no less certain doom. We often hear it asserted that such murderous baby-farming is in Europe a thing of the past. My own opinion is that France is the only European country of which this assertion may possibly be true.