The Breaking up of Families

Harmless senile patients, who are incurable, may safely and with increased comfort to the patient as well as with greater economy, be boarded in carefully selected homes if they do not have relatives able to care for them. Small psychopathic hospitals, in which acutely insane persons may be taken for brief periods of observation and treat ment, often restore their patients to their families without the necessity for formal commitment to an asylum.

The essential feature of the normal family is the relation between parent and child. Questions affecting the claims of grandparents and grandchildren, and of collateral rela tions frequently arise, and must be considered on their merits. If through long association or special circum stances such relatives become in fact integral parts of the family, their position should be safeguarded, but a clannish superstition which demands great sacrifices, possibly at the expense of children, for the sake of relatives who are not really part of the family is of doubtful social value.

By one serious menace is the integrity of the family endangered. The removal of children for destitution, for ungovernable conduct, and for improper guardianship is a state policy which has had an extraordinary development, especially in New York and California, within the past generation. It is true that there have always been children who, because of the death of their parents, because of their destitution, or their unfitness for parental responsibilities, have required some substitute for the natural protection of their own family, and it has long been recognized that children were entitled to some protection at the hands of the state against neglect, even if from their own parents. In some American communities the state itself undertakes to provide, either in public institutions or in foster-homes selected by itself, for those who become public charges. In the city of New York such children are, for the most part, cared for in private institutions, chiefly under the control of religious bodies, but maintained under what is practically a contract with the city at public expense. In other parts of the state the same system is in force, although the county authorities also place children in many instances in foster-homes either directly or through societies which exist for that purpose.

From the maze of complications and difficulties in which the whole question as to when children should become dependent is involved, a few principles emerge : I. Children should remain with their parents if the latter are of good character and have sufficient income for their support. Simple and obvious as this proposition appears, it has been frequently violated in the past, and in the city of New York its violation has been so widespread and continued as to create in the minds of many residents and, in rare instances, even in the minds of future immi grants beyond the seas, the idea that, by coming here and putting themselves into relations with the proper persons, it will be possible for them to rid themselves of the ex pense and burden of looking after their children. The

rules of the State Board of Charities, under which children are now received and retained in public institutions, and the action of the Department of Public Charities under those rules, have checked this tendency to some extent, but have by no means eradicated it.

II. Parents who are of good character, but who, without assistance, cannot earn enough to support their children at home, should, as a rule, receive such assist ance, and the breaking up of the family should thus be averted. In 1898 the Charity Organization Society of the city of New York inaugurated a plan by which a rep resentative of the society called daily at the office of the Department of Public Charities to examine the applica tions which had there been made for the commitment of children on the ground of destitution, and after necessary inquiries, to select those who might appropriately be aided at home, as an alternative to this separation of mother and children. The result of this experience, set forth in the succeeding annual reports of the society, demonstrates beyond possible controversy that assistance can wisely be provided from private sources for a considerable number of such families.

III. If

children are removed because their parents are morally unfit guardians for them, this removal should be unconditional. There should be no hesitation in trans ferring the legal guardianship in such cases ; there should be usually no opportunity for intercourse between parent and child, and no obstacle should be placed in the way of such disposition of the child as is best for its own welfare. Without passing at present upon the relative merits of institutional care and the system of placing out children in families, it is clear that whichever is best for the child should, in cases of improper guardianship, be adopted with the least possible delay. The care provided by the state should continue as long as the interests of the child require, and should not be influenced by the impor tunities of relatives. Increased precautions are doubtless necessary not to remove children upon this charge unless the facts warrant it, as the danger of injustice both to parent and child is always present ; but if, after careful review of the circumstances, a court decides that the parents are unfit to care for it because of moral depravity, or that the child is living under degrading conditions, the child should be so disposed of as to prevent the effective claim to the services of the child as soon as he is old enough to have a money value to the parent who has been declared to be an unfit guardian.