The Way We Live Now
How to Dispose of Unwanted Children
By LEO BERRY Aold as the human race itself is the problem of how to get . rid of one's redundant children; i.e., children 'surplus to requirements' or otherwise not wanted. It has been solved at various times in various ways, often in the face of difficulties which challenge the ingenuity and determination of the parents concerned.
It must be said at once that some of the oldest methods have now fallen into complete disuse. The exposure of infants is ineffective, not only because of an acute shortage of vultures and jackals, but because some spiteful neighbour or interfering busybody may find the child and bring it home to you alive. It is doubtful if a pile of babies left on a car park or in a market square would remain there long enough for exposure to be effective. No religion today will accept babies as sacrificial offerings. The Indian Rajput. to avoid the ruinous expense of weddings, used to dissolve a lethal pill in the milk which was fed to his redundant children. This cannot be done today under the National Health Service. The Chinese drowned _their unwanted infants, their batches. Mottles. in what they touchingly called the Babies' Pond. The Greeks exposed de- formed babies for the common good. The Romans made more sure of things by simple slaughter, until adverse changes were made in the law. In later years there was an approxima lion to present practice. Children were deposited in marble shells at the doors of churches, in the knowledge that tiles:. iactati would thereafter be cared for by mariciani.
In 1729 there was published a Modest Pro- posal for Preventing Children of Poor People Iron: being a Burden to Their Parents. The author, Dr. Jonathan Swift, was a well-known divine, so that the tract could be recommended with complete confidence. Briefly, the proposal was that parents should fatten their surplus children for eating. In recent years great efforts have been made to fatten children beyond the normal requirements of the rudest health. This has been helped by -the free issue of gallons of milk to school children, although the government department concerned now asserts that milk is not fattening. The Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Education in 1962 quoted from re- ports received. 'Obesity in school children.' wrote one school medical officer. 'remains one of the most difficult problem: of the SMO.' 'The fat child turns up today.' said a consultant ptediatrician, 'in undiminished numbers.' Another SMO complained of the difficulty in persuading 'grossly overweight children' to diet properly. Yet all this fattening-up is wasted. An inquiry is necessary to discover why. It may be that the fattening period is thoughtlessly prolonged until the school-leaving age, when the child becomes of pecuniary value to his parents as a wage- earner. He or she is also tougher and less succu- lent to eat at that age. Even if this were not true, the fact remains that the killing of children for eating has never actually been legalised.
The practice now adopted by English parents in disposing of their unwanted children is either to sell them or to give them away. 'The latter is the commoner and the safer method. For one thing, parents are too anxious to be rid of such children to bother about sale procedure. The saving on food and 'clothing for fifteen years or more is a consideration in itself. Giving one's
children away, even the unborn, is now a recog- nised English custom. It does not violate either common or statute law and can therefore be practised with impunity. Mr. Keith Ellis, in Today (July 16, 1960), said that about 3,000 married mothers per annum give away their babies. This is additional to the thousands of unmarried mothers who, with more reason, do likewise with the help of the Adoption of Children Act.s. This traffic in children is quite openly carried on. Unwanted babies have been advertised in local newspapers and in shop windows. Parents are advised, however, that this expense is quite unnecessary. All that is required is that parents should let it be known they have (or may shortly have) a child to 'give away.' The press will then report this as news and that, of course, is free publicity. The sale of a child need present no difficulty. provided that the child is not sold into adoption. It is, of course, not neces- sary for the buyer to adopt his purchase. Prices vary greatly. lp November, 1962, a three-month- old girl was offered for sale for £1,000. A month or two later a ten-month-old girl was sold for as little as DO. for which amount the vendors gave a receipt. As the purchasers were adopting the child, a statutory offence was committed. Both parents were sentenced to imprisonment, but on appeal_ the sentences sere quashed. The Recorder thought that it was the vendors who should have been prosecuted.
The Adoption of Children Acts are most help- ful to parents of unwanted children. Some years ago a civil 'servant and his wife, in their early thirties, were expecting their third child. They asked their city children's department to dispose of it at birth. The department reported in due course that they were 'trying to meet the parents' wishes.' Press comments, however, were hostile to the parents. It was said that a family of two was almost the minimum family possible, that the expected third child might not wish to be adopted, as thereby he would lose not only _parents, brother and sister, but all his relations and even his very identity. The conimittee chair- man said that the _action taken 'defeated the purpose of the Adoption Act, which was de- signed to give a proper home and family life to deserted or abandoned children,' and not to en- able parents to evade their responsibilities.
How many .children has a wife a right to try for, assuming that she likes children? The answer is one only. It might have been more. It could not be less. The Church may still regard the procreation of children as one of the pur- poses of marriage. The courts are more reason- able. In 1961 a Divorce Court judged ruled that a husband was 'not unreasonable in refusing to have more than one child on his present salary' of £3,000 a year,
1..astly, a warning. Mothers who plan to sell. exchange or give away their unwanted children must not weaken in their resolve. A Leicester- shire mother offered her unborn baby as a free eift. She had three other children and 'three were enough for anyone.' Yet when the time came she changed her mind. With her new and fourth baby in her _arms, she declared: 'No mother could be happier than 1 and I could not have made a more right decision. When I saw my son for the first time T knew that I could not let him go.'
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