Removing Children

Abstract

This chapter traces the rising belief that the state could provide superior guardianship to abusive parents and that it should remove children from the company of dangerous adults. The prison-reform movement helped lead the way by proposing the removal of children from the company of corrupting adults and placing them in reformatories. These reformatories were to replace abuse and corruption with love and redemption and were increasingly organized along the lines of surrogate, and improved, families. Reformers across the world and in Spain also started to encourage visitors to the poor to intervene in family life and separate children from dangerous parents and adults. Social Catholics determined to move beyond charity work and to solve social problems became particularly attracted to this family visiting work. This work also offered Catholic women a chance to stake a claim for a public role in the defence of children and motherhood.