Speaking generally, children at a baby-farm are younger than those under the care of the Poor Law authorities, for the need of putting the former out to nurse commences with their birth. The mortality of children at a baby-farm is usually greater than that of Poor Law children, supervision in the case of the latter being commonly much more effective. In most countries, State regulation of children under the Poor Law extends only for the first few years of life, and applies only to those boarded out for money; but supervision may extend through the later years of childhood, and even to the attainment of full legal age, and may apply to all the children for whose care the local authority is responsible.
In the countries in which the Latin system for the care of foundlings prevails—in those, that is to say, in which no inquiry into paternity is permitted (for example, in France and Italy)—baby-farming is less prevalent than it is in countries in which inquiry into paternity is permitted. The reason for this is that in these latter countries a much larger proportion of unmarried mothers receive from the natural fathers an allowance for the maintenance of their children, and therefore a much larger proportion of illegitimate children in these countries are farmed out for pay. At the present day, the requirements with which the nurses and foster-parents have to comply in the case of all children (alike those farmed out by their relatives and those boarded out by the local authorities) are much the same in all countries; and there is the same general similarity in the matter of the principles of supervision and in that of the supervising authority. The tendency of evolution is that all the nurses and all the foster-parents should be supervised by the same authority, and in accordance with identical principles.
Institutional Care versus Family Care.—If the child is not cared for in its own home, the question arises, is recourse to be had to institutional care or to family care (close or open care). The following are the objections to institutional care.
(a) It does not readily allow proper attention to be paid to the individuality of each child. The care of the emotional life is a matter of especial difficulty. It is utterly impossible that all the children in an institution should be truly and individually loved. To pay a preference to individual children arouses jealousy. In an institution the children learn nothing about the daily experiences of family life (for example, the difficulties of earning a living, troubles small and great); on the other hand, occurrences which profoundly disturb the life of the family (illness and death, for example) are matters of daily experience in the life of institutions.
(b) In the institution the child never experiences absolute freedom. On the contrary, it feels itself subject to unceasing control.
(c) Epidemic diseases spread very readily.
(d) A few bad children may readily communicate unwholesome ideas and practices to the others.
(e) In institutional life, the children learn nothing of the vital needs of daily life, or of the difficulties of the struggle for existence; and yet it is all the more necessary that they should learn something about these matters, inasmuch as in their subsequent life they will presumably have a hard struggle for their daily bread. Whatever the child really needs, it receives in the institution; thus an idea arises in its mind that there is some higher power which cares for all these things. The child has to make no effort, no sacrifices are exacted from it; in the institution, tests of the child’s power of resistance, such as might strengthen it to meet the temptations of the outer world, are few and far between, for from the temptations of the outer world it is sheltered by the walls of the institution.
(f) The institution is not adapted to provide for the complete education of a child—for the learning of a trade. It is absolutely necessary that institutional care should be supplemented by work under a master, in a technical school or teaching workshop.