Kindness of Strangers : Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance

In The Kindness of Strangers, John Boswell argues persuasively that child abandonment was a common and morally acceptable practice from antiquity until the Renaissance. Using a wide variety of sources, including drama and mythological-literary texts as well as demographics, Boswell examines the evidence that parents of all classes gave up unwanted children, "exposing" them in public places, donating them to the church, or delivering them in later centuries to foundling hospitals. The Kindness of Strangers presents a startling history of the abandoned child that helps to illustrate the changing meaning of family.CONTENTSPt. I: Ancient PatternsRome: the historical skeleton Rome: Literary flesh and blood Fathers of the church and parents of children Pt. II: The Early Middle AgesVariations on familiar patternsA Christian innovation: oblationDemographic overviewPt. III: The High Middle AgesNew demographics: 1000-1200Oblation at its zenithThe thirteenth century: abandonment resumesLiterary witnessesPt. IV: The Later Middle AgesContinuities and unintended tragedy