Infant Abandonment in Nineteenth-Century Italy

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This award supports a cultural anthropologist studying the history of the abandonment of infants in nineteenth century Italy. At that time many institutions were established in Europe to deal with this phenomenon. This project will apply the methods of historical demography to trace the fate of these infants through a combination of resources: archives of a foundling home in Bologna, nineteenth-century documents and other literature describing the foundling home system, archives of the community that the foundling home was situated in, and recent Italian historical studies documenting this phenomenon. Changes in the prevalence of abandonment will be analyzed with reference to changes in Italian society. This research is important because infant abandonment waxes and wanes with changes in the social, political and economic situations of families. Increased understanding of the history of this phenomenon will help us understand how to avoid it in the present time.