From Economic to Sentimental

Children’s changing value

IF YOU PLAN TO HAVE CHILDREN, WHY DO YOU PLAN TO HAVE CHILDREN?

Between 1870 and 1930, children shifted from being a financial benefit to being a financial drain. As a result,

children’s value shifted from economic to sentimental.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdjal0EMVIU

Child Apprenticeship in Indiana

The said overseers . . . do by these presents put place and bind Margaret J Clark a poor girl aged five years eight months and twenty two days as an apprentice to the said James Wood to be taught the art trade and occupation of Houswifery which the said James Wood and wife now uses and to live with and serve him the said James Wood as an apprentice for twelve years and three months from this date.

Delaware County, Indiana, 1856

Indiana’s child apprenticeship law

It shall and may be lawful for the overseers of the poor of the township aforesaid, to put out as apprentices, all such poor children, whose parents are dead, or shall be by the said overseers, found unable to maintain them, males until the age of twenty-one and females until the age of eighteen years.

Indiana General Assembly, 1818

Revisions to the apprenticeship law

There shall be essential to the validity of any indenture binding a white apprentice and having more than three years to serve, an agreement on the part of the master or mistress, to cause the apprentice to be taught to read and write, and the rules of arithmetic, to the double rule of three, inclusive, if practicable.

Indiana General Assembly, 1852

Which children were apprenticed?

First. The child of any pauper supported in whole or in part by the county. Second. Any child whose parents abandon, or neglect, or are unable to support it. Third. Any child having neither father, mother, or guardian, and having no sufficient means of support and education. Fourth. Any white child taken from any asylum in any other State and brought to this State to be bound.

Indiana General Assembly, 1852

Common features of formal apprenticeship documents:

• The child must have some schooling• The child must be given basic necessities• The child must obey his or her master• The child must learn a trade• At the end of the apprenticeship, the child

would be given compensation (generally a bed and bedding for girls, and a horse and saddle for boys)

Under this system, what sort of children do you think would be most in demand?

Which would not be in demand?

Baby Farms

“We charge more for little babies because it is harder to get homes for them while they are still young; we have to keep them.”

Transition away from Apprenticeship and Baby Farms

and toward Foster Care and Adoption

“It is time that some active means were taken to put a stop to the practice of baby farming which in the vast majority of instances, is only another term for baby-killing.”

New York Times, 1873

“I do not mean apprenticed or bound out like workhouse children, but adopted into good homes with all their happy surroundings.”

Sociologist C. D. Randall, “The Michigan System of Child Saving,” 1896.

“Families . . . In need of a servant have gone to some ‘orphanage,’ . . . And asked for a boy or girl old enough to serve them. And what have they secured? Just what they asked for: a servant. . . . But their soul has not been enriched. . . . We . . . Urge that such families make a great mistake in asking for a servant. We come to say that there is a jewel in that abandoned child.”

Rev. M. T. Lamb, 1905

Shifting Value

• In 1870, people were interested in taking in older children (through apprenticeships) but not infants or toddlers.

• By 1930, people were interested in taking in infants and toddlers (through adoption), but not older children.

Primary Sources on Child Apprenticeship and Foster Care

• Why did Judge Chase throw out a child’s apprenticeship?

• What does the 1867 New York Times article suggest about changing apprenticeship norms?

• What shift does the 1938 New York Times article discuss?

Wrongful Death Cases

And children’s economic value

In 1896, courts awarded parents of a two-year-old killed in a railroad accident only minimal burial expenses, because the child was “of such tender years as to be unable to have any earning capacity, and hence the defendant could not be held liable in damages.”

In 1979, courts awarded the parents of a three-year-old who died from a lethal dose of fluoride at the dental clinic $750,000.

What changed?

19th Century Wrongful Death Suits

• Courts awarded damages for the death of a child by calculating “the probable value of services of the deceased from the time of his death to the time he would have attained his majority, less the expense of his maintenance during the same time.”

“How much is the life of a child worth? At what price may a girl or boy be killed? Has a youthful life an actual value capable of being assessed in dollars and cents?”

“The Price of a Child,” Current Literature, 1902

“Is the baby worth a dollar? . . . For any eye that is not blind with coarse mammonism and unable to see value in anything that does not immediately earn net cash the baby is one of the most valuable and productive assets of the family . . . as a joy giver [the baby] is an incomparable success . . . “

“Is the Baby Worth a Dollar?” Ladies’ Home Journal, 1910

Economic value Sentimental value

MARY ELLEN AND THE DISCOVERY OF CHILD ABUSE

Why does the narrator go to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals?

In the New York Times article, what was Mrs. Connolly charged with?

Do you think it matters that Mary Ellen was abused by a woman who was not her biological mother, or that mismanagement by the charity that placed her played a role?

Children’s Emotional Value during the Great Depression

“The emergence of this economically ‘worthless’ but emotionally ‘priceless’ child has created an essential condition of contemporary childhood.”

Vivianna Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child