{"title":"The Spanish Courts and the Poor, 1926–1936","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter traces the growth of juvenile courts in Spain and the support they attracted from across the political spectrum. Under the surface of this support lay conflict between Catholic, liberals, and socialists over the degree to which secular principles and practices should govern the courts. With the support of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, the Catholic viewpoint proved ascendant and did not come under serious threat after the democratic Second Republic arrived in 1931. The chapter studies the personnel and practices adopted by the largely Catholic-dominated courts. It also offers a case study of social conditions in Madrid and explores the vulnerability of poor families to removal, the role of support networks, and the agency of poor families who turned to the courts to take children into care as a stop-gap measure while they put their lives in order.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114969913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Removing Children","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0003","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127318240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Battle for Madrid and the Splintering of Families, 1936–1939","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The Spanish Civil War displaced and split families, destroyed support networks, forced families into poverty, and led to a surge in family disputes. As a result, child removal and separation became the lot of much greater numbers of people. Widows of husbands lost to violence behind the lines formed one highly vulnerable group. Refugees and evacuees also frequently found their families split apart and poor families proved especially at risk. The mass evacuation of children also led to a surge in custody disputes. Despite the disruption of the war, the Madrid Juvenile Court pressed ahead with its work and many of its conservative members continued to exert a hold over the institution despite a strong shift in sentiment towards the left during the conflict. These officials continued to enforce traditional notions of morality and gender roles and savvy relatives could exploit this situation in custody disputes.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"42 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124970244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of Family Visitors in Supervising, Removing, and Returning Children","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Family visitors supervised children released on probation and strove to guide youngsters and their parents towards the faith. They insisted on children being baptized, studying the catechism, and, where necessary, placing them in Catholic boarding schools. They consistently looked to the spiritual rather than material welfare of the families. In this endeavour they targeted poor families, political families, and Protestants. Despite this, family visitors were overworked, floundered in the face of family resistance, and frequently chose the most lenient policy available. This allowed parents to petition for the return of their children or to keep their children with only a few desultory inspections of their homes carried out. Children exploited these weaknesses. In some cases they simply walked out of care homes and returned to live with their families. Children on probation also proved willing to denounce parents they despised for their immoral behaviour.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"798 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125861233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dangerous Parents","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"While we know much about the cult of childhood, historians have spent less time analysing the ways in which certain parents became demonized from the late eighteenth century. This chapter traces growing criticisms across nations of parents who were felt to have endangered their offspring and to have deprived the nation of a future robust population. Industrialization and urbanization lent a growing shrillness to the debate. Doctors, opponents of child labour and slavery, and criminologists all began to denounce parents and especially those from the left who they identified as a threat to their offspring and society. As the nineteenth century progressed and competition between nations increased, the growth of eugenic thought gave extra virulence to these denunciations. This set the stage for demands for ‘dangerous’ parents to be stripped of their guardianship.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127873422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Rise of Juvenile Courts and the Consolidation of Child Removal","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"In the late nineteenth century, demands to curb parental sovereignty merged with campaigns for prison reform. As a result, calls gathered pace for juvenile courts which would remove children from the adult, criminal justice system and protect children from abusive parents and adults. The juvenile-court movement developed in the context of the growth of child-protection societies and child-protection legislation. Nevertheless, reformers remained frustrated by the enduring power of parental sovereignty and pushed for greater change. In 1899, reformers in Illinois achieved their ambition of creating courts that removed children from the criminal justice system, ensured children could be placed in reformatories, and empowered judges to curb guardianship rights. The courts also worked with family visitors and frequently preferred to place families and children on probation rather than move directly to child removal. Spaniards followed these developments in the USA and countries such as Belgium, and created their own courts.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"79 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114790857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"The Conclusion highlights some of the text’s main arguments. These include the importance of the discourse of the dangerous parent and superior state guardianship in paving the way to the age of mass child removal. The juvenile courts are shown to sit centre stage in this history. The Spanish case helps reveal the transnational origins of these courts. It also sheds light on the political agreement and conflict that underpinned the creation and operation of the courts. The documentary record left by the courts reveals much about the processes behind removal and helps us move away from the binary of coercion and victimhood which frequently characterizes discussion of removals. By exploring these processes we can recognize the suffering, agency and resilience of poor families, displaced families and political families. This approach provides a more complex context for understanding the debate around ‘lost children of Francoism’ and child removal more widely.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129444467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Poor and the Fight for Custody, 1926–1936","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"The Madrid court became a battleground for relatives contesting child custody and their personal conflicts became channelled into the state. Mothers used their agency and the courts to win custody in the face of a wider legal system that empowered husbands over wives. Grandparents, and frequently maternal grandparents, also used the courts to overcome paternal rights to guardianship, although daughters-in-law they presented as immoral could also lose custody of their children. Parents themselves could also denounce their own children to ensure they were taken into care. For their part, children could also flee their homes or denounce their parents. Court staff caught up in these conflicts remained loyal to the idea of the dangerous parent and continued to advocate removal or reform through the faith. That said, the use of probation meant that family bonds often survived.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122880733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hardening Francoist Attitudes towards Political Opponents","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"During the Spanish Civil War, a bitter debate over which side better protected or represented a profound threat to children led to harsher attitudes towards opponents and campaigns to ‘rescue’ children from the clutches of those presented as a danger. Government supporters charged that Francoists allowed children to witness executions behind the lines, while they protected youngsters from the criminal bombardment of civilians behind the lines. For their part, Francoists claimed that only they could protect youngsters from the barbarians on the left. Increasingly, Francoists hoped to win back the ‘souls’ of children ‘corrupted’ by ‘Reds’. The Francoists campaigned strongly for children evacuated overseas or to other parts of Spain to be returned from ‘Reds’ and to be re-educated as ‘Spaniards’. Catholics played an especially important role in these campaigns and in re-education initiatives, and this outlook would become part and parcel of the thinking of juvenile-court staff.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131797302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Franco’s Victory","authors":"Peter Anderson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844576.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Social Catholic groups took firm control of the juvenile courts after General Franco occupied Madrid. They swiftly exercised their moral judgements on families which suffered executions, imprisonment, employment purges, dire living conditions, and the high cost of living. Court staff particularly loathed secular ‘Red’ worker groups and endeavoured to capture the children of these foes of the faith. Mothers forced into prostitution or petty crime, living in overcrowded and poor housing whose lives were marked by hunger and disease, proved especially vulnerable to child removal. They could also fall victim to their husbands serving jail terms for political offences who, from prison, could battle to deprive them of custody. In other cases, families managed to keep bonds alive by visiting children and youngsters petitioned the authorities to be allowed home to help look after their parents.","PeriodicalId":403827,"journal":{"name":"The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain","volume":"214 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132216168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}