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Child abandonment is the practice of abandoning offspring outside of legal adoption. Causes include many social, cultural, and political factors as well as mental illness.

The abandoned child is called a foundling or throwaway (as opposed to a runaway).

Contents 1 Child abandonment in real life 2 Psychologal effects of abandonment 3 Notable foundlings 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References

[edit] Child abandonment in real life

Poverty is often a root cause of child abandonment. Persons in cultures with poor social welfare systems who are not financially capable of taking care of a child are more likely to abandon him/her. Political conditions, such as difficulty in adoption proceedings, may also contribute to child abandonment, as can the lack of institutions, such as orphanages, to take in children whom their parents can not support.

Societies with strong social structures and liberal adoption laws tend to have lower rates of child abandonment.

Historically, many cultures practice abandonment of infants, called "exposure." Although such children would survive if taken up by others, exposure is often considered a form of infanticide -- as described by Tertullian in his Apology: "it is certainly the more cruel way to kill. . . by exposure to cold and hunger and dogs". This form of child abandonment is much more widely spread throughout societies, being used even by the rich to dispose of unwanted children, particularly girls. Many of these children were indeed taken up, for slavery and prostitution.

Early laws governing child abandonment often prescribed that the person who had taken up the child, either to adopt or to raise as a slave, was entitled to the child. This both discourages the practice of exposure and encourages strangers to take up exposed children.^[1]

Today, abandonment of a child is considered to be a serious crime in many jurisdictions, because the result is that the child and the other parent, if any, often end up on welfare. For example, in the U.S. state of Georgia, it is a misdemeanor to willfully and voluntarily abandon a child, and a felony to abandon one's child and leave the state. In 1981, Georgia's escalation of abandonment from a misdemeanor to a felony — based solely upon the defendant's flight from the state — was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.^[2]

[edit] Psychologal effects of abandonment

[edit] Notable foundlings

• Jean le Rond d'Alembert
• Johannes Seluner
• Kaspar Hauser
• Jacqueline Cochran

[edit] See also

• Baby hatch
• Desertion
• Attatchment behaviour
• Child abandonment in literature
• Child abuse
• Child neglect
• Dependenccy (Personality)
• Feral child
• Infanticide
• Lonelinesss
• Orphan
• Relationship termination
• Safe haven law
• Seperation anxiety
• Seperation reactions
• Street children

[edit] Notes

1. ↑ The Visigothic Code: (Forum judicum), Book IV: Concerning Natural Lineage Title IV: Concerning Foundlings
2. ↑ Jones v. Helms, 452 U.S. 412 (1981) .

[edit] References

• Dorothy L. Sayers, "Oedipus Simplex: Freedom and Fate in Folklore and Fiction"

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This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Child abandonment. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.