ABANDONED CHILDHOOD. - I. a. is synonymous with infancy in a state of abandonment (from the Old French abandon, at the mercy and discretion of another). Belonging to this category are children incapable of providing for themselves and left to their own devices by those who have custody of them and are obliged to care for them. The abandonment spoken of here is not that done with the deliberate purpose of harming the child, but in order to escape the worries or the burdens of care or custody, cutting off all traces of the fact created by the existence of an infant. The terms encountered in this connection are two: abandonment and exposure of offspring (v. ESPOSTI). In the history of the problem they have at times had one and the same meaning and at times not, according to the different historical periods and the different social conditions.
The Romans, as the sources attest (unlike the Greeks), by the word exponere meant to denote the fact of abandonment either because the newborn was left to die, or because it was to be taken up by someone and thus saved.
In the Middle Ages and even later, especially in the treatises of scholars, we encounter the concept of exposure in the twofold meaning, as among the Romans.
Beginning from a certain period, under the influence of historical facts, among which the most important was the creation and development of special welfare institutions, the foundling hospitals (v.), a distinction began to be made between exposure and abandonment of offspring. In the modern world, after the reform of welfare works in the field of abandoned infancy, the two concepts underwent a further clarification.
Today by exposure is meant the entrusting of offspring to the foundling hospital. By abandonment of infancy, on the other hand, is meant the action by which parents abandon the child either with an evil purpose, or simply with the intention of entrusting it to public charity. These are therefore two distinct problems; in fact, while exposure is juridically, even if not morally, lawful, the abandonment of an infant is considered a crime by all modern legislations. In practice, moreover, even those who are found in a state of real abandonment, if the investigations do not lead to the discovery of the one who abandoned them, are taken into the foundling hospital and treated as foundlings.
The canonico-civil laws prior to the creation of the modern Codes dealt with abandoned infancy and prescribed penalties against the guilty of this crime. A decree of Gregory IX (de infantibus et languidis expositis) deprived forever of patria potestas the parents who abandoned a child. In judicial practice severe penal sanctions were applied to those guilty of abandonment of an infant, even when done without criminal intent.
The penalty could extend as far as death, in the case of the death of the little child: in other cases lesser penalties were applied (cf. A. Bossius, Tractatus varii qui omnem fere criminalem materiam pertractant, Venice 1612, pp. 106-107). At present in some countries the criminal law concerning abandoned infancy has a general character: thus in Poland, where the cases of abandonment of persons (and therefore also children) in an abnormal or unconscious state are contemplated generically (art. 200). Other legislations consider more specifically the case of parents who abandon their offspring (Swiss Penal Code, art. 219).
Russian legislation on this point is of a laconic simplicity, but imprecise (art. 158). In many other nations a distinction is made between cases of abandonment committed by persons charged with the custody of the child and by the parents, establishing a greater penalty in the latter case: thus, for example, in Germany (art. 221) and in France, where among other things a distinction is made between the case of abandonment in a frequented place and that done in an unfrequented place (art. 349-52): Holland in this field follows the French legislation (art. 256-59). The country where in this regard the legislation is most detailed is Austria, where the specifications of individual cases are all considered (art. 149-52).
Italian legislation is in this very clear and specific, contemplating both the case of general abandonment of a minor under 14 years of age or of an incapable person (art. 591) and also the specific case of abandonment of an infant for reasons of honour. "Whoever abandons a newborn immediately after birth, in order to save his own honour or that of a close relative, is punished with imprisonment from three months to one year. The penalty is imprisonment from six months to two years if personal injury results from the act, and from two to five years if the death of the newborn results from it" (art. 592). Without the extenuating circumstance of honour the penalty is from six months to five years, if without personal injury; from one to six years, if with personal injury; from three to eight years, if death results from it.
But even before the penal codes, the abandonment of infancy was condemned by the Christian conscience.
The father of the Greco-Roman family was the absolute master and it was lawful for him to abandon his own children to death or to the charity of others (the mother could do so with illegitimate children). Even the great thinkers of the Greco-Roman world admitted the lawfulness of the abandonment of infancy and upheld it for social or political utility (cf. Plato, De republica, VIII, 459; Aristotle, Politica, VII, 17, 10). The Fathers of the Church opposed with force the practice and the justifications of the pagan philosophers and condemned abandonment because of the danger to the life of the child, deprived of the natural and indispensable help needed to continue living, and because of the evidently anti-natural interruption of the bonds existing between parents and children, even illegitimate ones (cf. St. Justin, I Apol., 27: PG, 6, 370; Athenagoras, Legatio, 35: PG 6, 970; Tertullian, Apol., 9: CSEL, 69, p. 26; id., Ad nationes, I, 16: ibid., XX, p. 87; Minucius Felix, Octavius, 30-31: ibid., II, pp. 43-44; Clement of Alexandria, Paedag., 3: PG, 8, 585).
Therefore the real abandonment of offspring is a grave fault, even apart from danger to their life; for this reason it has been prosecuted since the earliest Christian times also by conciliar laws (Council of Vaison [442], can. 9 in Mansi, VI, col. 455; Second Council of Arles [452], can. 51, ibid., VII, col. 884; Council of Adge, can. 24, ibid., VIII, col. 329).
Can the moral judgment of condemnation, clear when it is a case of real abandonment of infancy, currently be repeated with regard to the special case of abandoned infancy that goes by the name of exposure? For historico-social reasons, first among which is the very existence of the foundling hospitals, moralists admitted, in certain cases, the lawfulness of the abandonment of infancy in such institutions for reasons of a social and individual order, especially in cases of illegitimate birth. But in themselves the principles of Christian morality also condemn the exposure of offspring at the foundling hospital. It is in fact the duty of parents (v.) to acknowledge and, if possible, to raise themselves their children even illegitimate ones, unless their presence comes to remove or disturb goods of a higher order than those to which the child has a right, that is, the integrity of the family or the safeguarding of the social order. Reasons of a merely personal or contingent order cannot justify before the conscience the abandonment of offspring. Even in the case of reasons of a higher order, it is never lawful to resort to pure and simple abandonment, at least in the present conditions of society. At most one may resort to exposure, although even on this point theological thought today is oriented toward greater severity.
But beyond the crime of directly abandoning the little creature, there are, especially today, other causes that have created and create hosts of abandoned children. It is no longer the perverse will of parents or of those caring for them that leaves children who are still unable to fend for themselves at the mercy of material and moral neglect: they are causes of force majeure, such as wartime events, voluntary and forced migrations, the absolute loss of any relative. More often, if the material abandonment is not complete, the moral abandonment is complete or nearly complete.
The Catholic Church, which, as has been seen, has always been so sensitive to the phenomenon of abandoned children since antiquity and is so in a most visible manner in mission territories (v. OPERA DELLA S. INFANZIA and cf. Instructio ad tuendam puerorum matrumque vitam in locis missionum, 11 Feb. 1936, in AAS, 28 [1936], p. 208 ff.), also in our countries of ancient civilization, faced with the recent spectacle of abandoned children, enormously extended by the war and the postwar period, in addition to exerting itself through the charitable work of its children, has wished to intervene with a new solemn document, the encyclical Quemadmodum, 6 Jan. 1946, for the moral and material assistance of indigent and abandoned children. The encyclical is entirely a warm exhortation "to support with prayer, with collaboration and with offerings... the provident activities, arisen for the purpose of assisting morally and materially indigent and abandoned childhood" (cf. the Italian translation, in Il monitore ecclesiastico, 71 [1946], pp. 14-27).