Orphanages, Foundlings, and Foster Mothers: The System of Child Circulation in a Brazilian Squatter Settlement

Orphanages, Foundlings, and Foster Mothers: The System of Child Circulation in a BrazilianSquatter SettlementAuthor(s): Claudia FonsecaSource: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 15-27Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3317494 .

Accessed: 19/09/2013 16:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Anthropological Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 134.117.10.200 on Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:28:02 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ifer

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3317494?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


ORPHANAGES, FOUNDLINGS, AND FOSTER MOTHERS: THE SYSTEM OF CHILD CIRCULATION

IN A BRAZILIAN SQUATTER SETTLEMENT CLAUDIA FONSECA

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

This article analyzes decisions by women in urban squatter settlements in Brazil to place children with the statejuvenile authorities, FEBEM. Although forms of"voluntary"fosterage do exist, mostplacements occur under "crisis conditions"--when the child's home has been ruptured by death, divorce or remarriage. In these conditions, the interaction of specific economic and cultural factors points to the dissolution of the mother-child unit as a satisfac- tory survival strategy. FEBEM is but one possible foster "parent"' along with relatives and acquaintances. A woman's choice between alternatives depends on her previous experience with FEBEM, her child's age, the availability offoster households in her personal universe, and the urgency of her need In dealing with FEBEM, the mother, applying the same policy she uses with otherfosterparents, tries to retain full parentalprerogatives while getting rid of the brunt ofchild-rearing responsibilities. Failure to recognize the economic and cultural context in which women make the decision to institutionalize a child leads FEBEM officials to view their demands as a morally reprehensible abuse of government assistance.

Based on two years' field work among poverty-stricken urban squatters in Porto Alegre, Brazil, this article analyzes the context and attitudes surrounding women's decisions to place their children with the state juvenile authorities, Fundacdo Estadual para o Bem-Estar do Menor (FEBEM). The women in question, do not act from ignorance, nor from a lagging "traditional" mentality ill-fitted to their needs in a modern industrialized society. Rather, they act in a manner coherent with a patterned sequence of life events and well-adapted to the actors' culturally-defined needs.

Although in no way underplaying the bru- tal material conditions in which the group studied is forced to live, this analysis avoids the sort of economic determinism which either excuses non-standard behavior in low-income groups as an "anomic" result of extreme deprivation (Moynihan 1965, Lewis 1966) or, in a more dynamic vein, reduces it to the realm of "survival strategies" (Blum- berg and Garcia 1977, Stack 1975, White- head 1978, Haguette 1982, Bilac 1978). In the study of child circulation (i.e., the transfer of nurturance responsibility for a child from one adult to another), economic duress is obviously a contributing factor; but, without a careful examination of the social and cultural factors through which it is mediated, misery can explain nothing. Moreover, the historical evidence so far brought to light, although admittedly scant, indicates that child circulation has been common among the urban poor in Brazil for nearly two cen- turies (Kuznesof 1980, Ramos 1975 and

1978). Even if these practices began as ad hoc survival strategies, it is inconceivable that after ten generations they would not have taken on specific significance, and would not have become integrated into a cultural pattern.

Cross-cultural research (Goody 1982, Carroll et al. 1970, Aries 1960, Badinter 1980) demonstrated that there is no inherent reason a mother should find it repugnant to foster out her children. Stil, in the Vila do Cachorro Sentado in Porto Alegre, women today persist in this practice despite counter pressures from dominant groups and their ideologies. This analysis sorts out the cultural configuration, including both values and life experiences, which appears, in a mother's mind, to outweigh contravening influences and lend meaning to her acts.

The Case Study

These observations are drawn from a study which took place between April 1981 and March 1983 in the Vila do Cachorro Sen- tado, a shantytown of about 750 squatters who have gradually settled, over the past eight years, on an empty lot in a middle-class neighborhood of Porto Alegre (a city in southern Brazil with a population of about 1,000,000). Although some are recently- arrived rural migrants, most inhabitants have been in Porto Alegre or some other major city for a generation (15 years) or more. Peo- ple of black origin make up slightly over half the Vila residents as opposed to 5-10% in the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods. Fewer than 10% of the families in the sample

15



16 ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

had offspring who had studied beyond first grade. Not one of the male community leaders (informal) could read, and younger men, some of whom had spent years in the state orphanage (therefore, in "schools"), could not pass the literacy test for a literate voter's card. Several women, on the other hand, could read reasonably well.

Although there is a small, local elite made up of neighborhood shopowners, most men in the Vila belong to the bottom rung of unskilled laborers. The junk men glean their living from the middle class's leftovers-- leftovers which, in the economic crisis of 1983, were fast diminishing. Aside from two or three night watchmen, most wage workers are seasonal laborers in the construction business in which employment diminishes by 40% during the customary winter lull. Wages seldom exceed the minimum salary-- thirty to fifty dollars a month-about enough to buy a round-trip metropolitan bus ticket, two loaves of bread and a liter or two of milk daily. There are no unemployment benefits or food stamps. Occasionally young men in the Vila supplement their incomes through petty theft. The employment opportunities open to the average woman in the Vila do Cachorro Sentado are no better a few have worked at luncheon counters, one had worked in the textile industry and another in a jam factory, but 95% of the employed females are in custodial occupations Women work as live-in maids earning well under a minimum salary, or as cleaning ladies paid on a daily basis.' In fact, it could be said that women contribute more to their family's support through scavenging--ragpicking, beg- ging for scraps of food and old clothes in the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods, and gleaning supplies from various charit- able organizations.

I do not suggest that this group is "typi- cal" of the Brazilian working class. 2 Rather, in theoretical terms, this population rep- resents what I call "sub-proletarians"-the part of the working class which, at a given moment, either is not qualified for available jobs, or is in excess of the demands of industrial production for labor. A Conflict Of Views

During our two years' contact, we collec- ted life histories from about seventy "mothers"

(women who either had children or who were over 20 years old and had been "married" at least five years) in the Vila. A point of methodological interest is that we did not approach this population in order to understand a problem defined by previous contact with Fundacdo Estadual para o Bem-Estar do Menor (FEBEM); rather, field ethnography in the Vila revealed the recurrent presence of FEBEM in our informants' lives. In at least sixteen of the seventy households studied, either the woman, her spouse and/or some child had been or was being raised in a state institution. In addition to these households, we recorded data on a dozen or so teenagers who, in clusters of two to four, share small shacks, and found that ten out of twelve had spent upwards of a year at FEBEM. Another handful of children, especially those who work as beggars (referred to in the Vila aspedintes, or "askers"), have had the experience of being carted off by a patrol of the Juizado (State Juvenile Authorities) for staying out too late or being too far from home unaccompanied by an adult. Thus, even if the majority of women in the Vila have not had a direct experience with FEBEM, nearly all of the women and their children are in constant awareness of FEBEM and the Juizado. Instead of threatening their naughty children with tales of the bogeyman, one hears mothers say "the judge will take you away if you don't behave." Rosane, 12, expressed a wistful desire to be picked up by the judge, "just once, so I could see what everyone is talking about. But I'm afraid. I wouldn't like to get stuck there."

A visit to the state orphanage confirmed our suspicions that there exists a fundamental difference of views between the poverty- stricken women and FEBEM officials. The latter hold that mothers consider FEBEM a depository where they should be able to leave children practically at will while still retaining patrio poder (legal parental rights). One official said:

There are some people who use our establish- ment as though it were a private finishing school. But it's not so. Their children pick up bad habits, mix with a bad lot. At best, they come out with a 'dependency mentality' and can never stand on their own feet. That's why, for the past two years, we've been emphasizing help to minors within the family.



CHILD CIRCULATION IN URBAN BRAZIL 17

It is not FEBEM's policy to stand indefinitely as nursemaid. Theoretically, either children are sheltered temporarily, in exceptional family circumstances (the mother is hos- pitalized, the parents lose their lodgings, etc.) and stay just long enough for the mother or couple to reestablish routine; or they are declared in "irregular situation" and the parents risk losing their parental rights. If, for a period of six months, a child's parents fail to appear at the orphanage despite repeated summonses, the judge is asked to "initiate an irquiry." If still there is no sign that the pare. ets wish to recover the child, the child may be irrevocably adopted out within two years. In such cases, the parents lose all legal rights and will not be informed of their offspring's whereabouts.

Our field experience indicated that certain women did in fact make a habit of con- signing their offspring to FEBEM with few qualms: "FEBEM accepts the children if you tell them you're alone and have to find work..and if they give you any trouble, just tell them you've got a new man who beats them. It works every time." All mothers are nonetheless shocked by any attempt to divest them of parental rights. In the Vila under study, two women who had thus lost trace of their children reacted with a mixture of disbelief and outrage. But, by way of pro- test, they could only muster vague threats: "I'm going to put a lawyer on the case!" To understand why juvenile authorities and at least certain elements of the population they pretend to serve are at such cross-purposes, we found it useful to examine the general structures of child circulation in the Vila.

Child Circulation in the Vila

Our survey of 68 mothers in the Vila showed that fostering out children is a common practice; fully 50% (27 out of 54) of the women over 20 years of age had at some time sent a child away to live under another person's care (see Table 1). About a third of these children went to state orphanages but two-thirds were distributed among maternal kin, other relatives, comadres and acquaintances (see Table 2). How are we to explain a phenomenon of such striking proportions which evidently goes far beyond the FEBEM/

poverty-stricken mothers relationship? A first hypothesis leads us to investigate

a possible cultural heritage left over from the rural custom of childlending. Indeed, it has not been uncommon in the Brazilian hin- terland for poorer families to establish a patron-client relationship with their land- lords or simply prosperous acquaintances, sending off a school-age child to serve as baby-sitter or assistant maid in exchange for room, board and some sort of instruction (see Salem 1981, Fonseca 1981). About half the adults of rural origin interviewed had thus spent several years of childhood far from their parents. The present-day practice of child placement we uncovered in the Vila do Cachorro Sentado is too different from the rural custom to be interpreted as a mere continuation of this tradition. In the rural situation, there exists no ambiguity about the child's status-he is brought in on a temporary basis, at a useful age, often to act as servant to the other children of the household. Although the child is referred to as a filho de criacio (literally, child by virtue of being raised), he or she normally addresses the adults of the household through the honorific terms Dona or Seu preceding the person's name. On the other hand, children in the Vila do Cachorro Sentado are placed early (usually in infancy) and in greater number; and they are absorbed into foster households on an equal footing with the foster parents' natural children (if any exist). Even when the child's "real" mother main- tains contact, the child will refer to his foster parents as mother and father, so it is not uncommon for children to grow up calling two or more adults Mde ("Mom"). In marked contrast to the rural practice, the ambiguity regarding rights and obligations between parents (foster or natural) and children is a predictable consequence of this system. Finally, children in this slum seldom go to "rich" households, but rather are taken in either by slightly better-off neighbors or by the state orphanages.

It would be misleading, however, to con- tend that no children are placed by their parents with the hope of establishing useful links. Four or five women purported to have given away children to a doting godmother




TABLE 1

INCIDENCE OF PARTICIPATION IN CHILD CIRCULATION ACTIVITIES

ACCORDING TO AGE OF FEMALE INFORMANT

PARTICIPANT NON-PARTICIPANT PERCENTAGE OF

PARTICIPANTS/TOTAL SAMPLE

Donors of

Children Recipients Total'

14 to 19 years old2 29 15 40 28 59%

20 to 34 years old 27 15 38 16 70%

Over 35 years old 10 13 20 2 82%

' The sum of donors plus recipients exceeds the Total of Participants because some women

had both given and received foster children. Three of the four women having done so were over 35 years old, the fourth was 22.

2 Three of these women were sterile (two had taken in foster children); the others had

all born children. Source: Author's Field Research. Time of Field Research: 1981-1983.

TABLE 2

RELATIONSHIP OF FOSTER PARENT TO THE FOSTERED CHILD, DATA SUPPLIED BY THE DONOR MOTHERS

KIN NON-KIN UNSPECIFIED Maternal Paternal Total Personal FEBEM Total

Grandmother Other Total Acquaintance

Number of 6 6 12 5 17 7 10 17 3

mothers choosing this option '

Number of 8 6 14 7 21 13 19 32 7

children placed ' The total number of cases exceeds the number of women donors because several women used more than one method for placing children. Source: Author's Field Research. Time of Field Research: 1981-1983.




because the foster mother had "a bigger house," "the means of sending the child to school" or could give "her a better life." At least one foster mother residing in the Vila had to put up with periodic visits from her ward's "real" mother, whenever the latter was in particular need of material help. Yet, barring those left in the state orphanage, the overwhelming majority of children were placed by their mothers in households of economic condition similar to their own, i.e., the children continued to live in irregular, usually squatting, settlements of wooden shacks devoid of comforts such as electricity and running water, and they did not carry their education beyond third or fourth grade. It would thus appear safe to assume that most women are not motivated to place their children by the hope of establishing a useful patron-client link, nor of improving anyone's lot Certainly, the fact that many if not most of the adults in the Vila spent part of their childhood years far from their own parents may account for the general acceptance of fosterage-people are not stigmatized as cruel or unloving for placing their offspring in foster households. But, to fully comprehend child placements, we are forced to look beyond traditions inherited from a rural past.

Fluid household boundaries, for example, present a distinctly urban and contemporary phenomenon closely linked to the practice of child circulation. A pretty baby is a cherished object which nearly everyone is eager to coddle. A woman's trusted neighbors may ask to "borrow" her baby from time to time for a few hours (to be paraded in front of friends), or even for a few days. It is not unusual for the more assiduous borrower, either on her own or the mother's initiative, to become the child's godmother, thus making official her parental responsibilities and paving the way for a possible change of the child's residence. (Since there are three categories of baptismal godparents-"of the church," "of the house" and "of umbanda', there is almost always a slot open for the will- ing neighbor.) We also knew of two cases where a child had been transferred from its mother to an unrelated woman with whom she had previously shared the same residence.

This sort of "voluntary" swapping of children is even more intense between relations where it is not always clear which children are being raised by whom. Many girls bear their first child while husbandless and living under their parents' roof when the mother moves out to live with a new husband some years later, the baby may be left with its grandparents. Women, starting their child-bearing career early and finishing late, often have offspring the age of their grandchildren. In such cases, mother and daughter, if they live near one another, may pool child-caring responsibilities. (One two- year-old had grown to call his mother "gramma" because of this sort of arrange- ment) We also knew of at least three older women who were said to be "practically rais- ing" a grandchild-in each case, the infant, whose mother lived close by, spent most of the day and many of its nights in the grandmother's house. One woman claimed she'd been raised by her grandmother, along with two cousins; the grandmother claims she only fostered (criou) one child-the other two, she merely "cared for" (cuidou). Teen- aged girls, in their haste to become mothers, will smother nephews with attention. One frequently took her infant nephew on weekend trips; another, who had been a full- time baby sitter since her niece's birth, enjoyed the title of "mama" and, when she herself became pregnant, vowed to give her own baby away rather than relinquish the niece.

However, at least half the placements are not the result of such gradual "voluntary" transfers, but are the result of ruptures in the domestic cycle. In the Vila do Cachorro Sen- tado, there is a high rate of conjugal instability. Leaving aside the wives of shopowners and salaried workers (around 20% of the village population), a conserva- tive estimate would put the average number of marriages per woman at three. It is thus not surprising that forty out of sixty-eight of the mothers interviewed had, due to death or abandonment, at one time or another faced the task of single-handedly caring for infant children. One response to such a situation would be the formation of matrifocal families wherein women relatives band together with their children to work out a viable division of




labor, some caring for the home and children, others assuring an income (Smith 1973, Stack 1975). In the Vila under study, however, women of child-bearing age very rarely remain single. In fact, out of fifty odd women under 45, only two maintained their single status for as much as a year one was considered "crazy," the other obstinately refused to part with her six children.

It could be argued that women seek to marry or remarry as a survival strategy, because a man's earnings, no matter how meager, are superior to any his wife or other woman can hope for. 5 There are also definite social pressures which militate against a woman's staying single. The young, unmarried female, her very presence interpreted as an affront by would-be suitors, is importuned not only by local males, but also by their jealous wives and girl friends. Moreover, whether because of the male code of hon-

or's• injunction against a wife's working or because of women's disadvantaged position on the job market, extremely few married women (2 out of 53) have independent incomes.6

The result of conjugal instability coupled with women's lack of income is that, for a good part of their reproductive years, women depend for their minimum survival needs on men who are not the fathers of their older children. To understand the effect this dependence has on child circulation, we must first consider the attitudes and roles of men as fathers.

There is no stigma attached to a doting father and men often demonstrate affection for their small children. Yet, the sexual division of labor dictates that the mother alone will receive recognition for nurturing a child; the father's sole responsibility is to provide for its material needs. Even after he separates from their mother, a man will ideally support his offspring. This support, especially if mother and children live far from the man, invariably peters out early on. Changing addresses, financial insolvency, the lack of legal marriage or declaration of paternity all render formal legal pressures virtually impo- tent, and informal community pressures are hardly more effective.

Whereas real fathers are supposed to (but often don't) support their children, the

men who support step-children (their wives' offspring by a former marriage) are considered "suckers" (trouxa). Because the ideal of reciprocal obligations between genitor and child is pervasive, a stepfather fears to see his years of investment go to the benefit of another man-when the children grow up they may return to succor their "real" father. Although a young woman's suitor will classically profess great affection for her offspring by previous liaisons, this attitude is not expected to last. "In the beginning, everything's just fine," declared one disgrun- tled woman, "but after a couple of months, he comes in and gives you a choice: him or the kids...." In reconstructing life histories, we found that older children had often been fostered out just about the time their first half- brother or sister was born-as though, having cemented a new husband's loyalty, women were less apprehensive about giving up their link to a previous spouse. One cannot really say the mothers "opt" for a new husband since, more often than not, the "force of circumstances" leaves them little choice. The outcome, however, is that "female-headed households" do not normally remain husbandless for long, and children are fostered out in great numbers.

When procuring a foster home for her children, a woman will give preference to her blood relatives. If the foster mother is a close relation, she may feel that the prestige and pleasure of taking in the child is sufficient reward for the sacrifice involved and that, because both women are members of the same kin network, she can expect eventually, even if indirectly, to be paid back for her time and financial investment. In such cases, children maintain their contacts with the biological mother, and by adolescence it is not uncommon to see them straddling the two homes, alternating stays with one "mother," then the other.

Often, however, the mother searching for a foster home finds that her own kin network is already saturated with children and she must look elsewhere for candidates-to the child's paternal kin, neighbors and acquaintances. For an unrelated foster mother, conflict is more likely to arise because she tends to see her parental claim and those of the

"reai" mother as mutually exclusive. A wom-




an does not savor the idea of caring years for an infant child only to see it return to its real mother when the bulk of child-caring responsibilities is over. Yet, the mystique surrounding blood ties is pervasive, and the mother-child bond is strong. It makes little difference that some children grow up calling as many as three or four adult women "mother," nor that foster mothers claim to enjoy their wards' undivided devotion. The idealization of the tie between biological mother and children crops up relentlessly in the discourse: "A mother never loses the right to her children;" "You can have fifty husbands but only one mother...." In the Vila, there are at least a dozen examples of young adults who, after spending the bulk of their childhood in foster homes or institutions, have chosen to live close to their "real" mother. Most children seem not to resent having been placed, and even when they do, their resentment does not preclude loyalties to their genitors.

Such attitudes in children are the comple- ment of the attitude held by biological mothers who consider that placing children in a foster home is not incompatible with their value as "good mother." Even more important, biological mothers almost never consider the possibility that they have "abandoned" their offspring. (The woman who, seven years after placing her daughter with a comadre, insists on taking the child back, is outraged upon encountering opposition: "I'm no female dog-to give my children away.") The only way a foster mother can insure against the real mother's emotional or actual physical recovery of her children is to "clean the birth certificate." Since babies are not registered at birth, but rather from fifteen days to twenty years later, the foster mother, encountering no opposition, can easily take out a child's birth certificate as though she were its "real" mother. Some women, in extremis, will consent to thus "give their children away on paper" (dardepapelpassado) although it is implied that these women will have no further rights or even contacts with their children. Yet, this tactic is useful to the foster parent only insofar as it furnishes a foundation for inculcating moral priorities in the child and, preferably, for obliterating all trace of the biological mother. To change an older child's certificate is meaningless since

he will already have sized up his blood ties.

Motivation and Attitudes Toward Institutionalization

The purpose of this lengthy overview of child circulation in the Vila is to help the reader see how the FEBEM/mother relationship fits into a configuration of social, cultural and economic elements. Having set the stage, I would now like to zero in on Vila dwellers' attitudes and experience related particularly to FEBEM. Both are well-exemp- lified in the following account:

Last time O. and I fought, I went to stay with my aunt But after a while, she said that was enough. She couldn't support the kids so I should turn them over to FEBEM. "Turn them over to FEBEM?" I said, "After all I've been through for these kids?" There was no other solution. No one wants a [live-in] maid who brings her children along. And a new compan- ion? He thinks it's all just great for about a month and then you have to choose: him or the kids So I went back to my husband.

When Dione, 22, pronounced these words, she was reasonably well provided for by her occasionally employed husband, brother and pensioned father. A month later, her husband in jail, her brother a fugitive and her father having suffered a stroke, her discourse was different:

FEBEM never killed anyone. My brother grew up there. My husband grew up there, and I would've been in if they'd had room. You heard Rosa [her husband's brother's wife]--she used to help out in the nursery and the children get fruit yogurts every afternoon. I'll go visit the kids regularly and in about a year, with any luck, I'll be able to take then back It won't be so hard on Ana Paula [her 18-month-old daughter- she's been away from me so many times [hos- pitalized for chronic bronchitis]. But Luis [her 3-year-old] won't understand.

Considering the proportion of families with direct FEBEM experience (16 out of 70), it is striking to see how many of Dione's immediate relatives have been in the orphanage. In fact, there appears to be a certain amount of endogamy among those raised in state institutions: in four cases, both spouses had been raised in FEBEM; in two out of three households where the husband only had been interned, his wife's brother had shared this experience. But to




conclude that there exists a "FEBEM-prone" sub-groupi would be unwarranted. Since only two of the parents raised in an orphanage had interned a child, transmis- sion of the habit from one generation to the next cannot be inferred from our material. 8 Moreover, to all indications, it is a fine line that separates FEBEM's clients from their neighbors Mothers who have had no direct experience will say, "No, I know so-and-so's parents were very poor and had to leave her there, but fortunately, we've never had such necessity in our family." People are cautious about casting moral aspersions on those who have been FEBEM's clients-first, because they might offend someone, and second, because they can't be sure a member of their own family won't eventually resort to such a measure. Interestingly enough, Dione's aunt who suggested this alternative is a member of the "solid working class," a respectable mother of two who, herself, never got within spitting distance of the orphanage.

Despite its banality, FEBEM is not generally seen in a benevolent or even neu- tral light As evidenced by Dione's reluctance, the first time a mother turns her child over to the juvenile authorities she will do so only under great duress. In every recorded case of institutionalization, one or both parents were absent from the household, and there was a concrete problem of how the children were to survive. The high proportion of fosterage cases originating in stressful situations is reflected in the overall number of children placed with non-relatives. Significantly, this proportion is several times that found in other societies where fosterage practices have been studied (see Payne-Price 1981). However, on the scale of preference for foster homes, if non-related acquaintances are undesirable, FEBEM is to be avoided at all costs, especially in the case of younger women.

Whereas young women (aged 17, 19, and 23) had placed their offspring with strangers, none under 29 had put a child in the orphanage. 9 Whether out of ignorance of the administrative formalities or conscious avoid- ance, many new mothers in desperate circumstances "abandon" their children (to neighbors, etc.) rather than turn them in to

FEBEM. Often a woman's first contact with the juvenile authorities is precipitated by a third party: the Juizado picks up her child for vagrancy, or a neighbor-the unwilling recipient of an abandoned child-turns the child in, and the mother is summoned. The first time this happens, the mother is likely to rush to bail out her offspring, but in doing so, she acquires experience and knowledge which diminish the negative mystique of the orphanage. "Those kids playing in the court- yard sprinkler-they looked pretty happy and well-fed," was one woman's comment after her visit to a FEBEM orphanage. And, a few weeks or a few months later, she may well be back to leave the same offspring or his siblings.

The age of her children, however, is pro- bably even more significant than the mother's age. The major concern of a woman who is forced to place her child in a foster home is to maintain her mother-right. The danger with a foster mother is that she might "clean the (child's) birth certificate" and move far away the danger with FEBEM is that they may give the child in adoption, thus prevent- ing any further contact with its biological parents. Perhaps one reason women are so reluctant to place children as infants is that babies are preferred by adoptive parents. The importance of legal custody diminishes as a boy or girl absorbs the ideology of the mother/child link and becomes independen- tly mobile-at least enough to locate his "blood". One girl declared that FEBEM (with her father's consent) had given her de papel passado to a foster family where she hardly spent a month before running away. "The police came and got me at my mother's and the judge made me swear I wouldn't run away again. I swore and then the next day I was free, I went back How were they going to stop me?"

Greater familiarity with the system, and less danger of permanently losing (now older) children explains in part why older rather than younger women resort to orphanages. The actual reasons for a child's institutionalization, however, are hard to pin down and tend to take on a different light depending on whose point of view we adopt. Mothers do not so readily proffer such information, and when they do, they emphasize




dire poverty due to the husband/father's abandonment or the child's own preference for FEBEM. People who had themselves grown up in orphanages more readily men- tioned causes such as the mother's abrupt absence through abandonment (2), death (1) or imprisonment (1). But people from both generations frequently brought out the stepparent/step-child conflict: 'o Linda, 55, for example, recounts that she had left a first son with her own mother for nine years, while she remarried and raised five children by a different father. When the first son's grandmother died, Linda brought him to stay with her, but he ran away within weeks. The boy was picked up by the Juizado for vagrancy, and put in an FEBEM institution. Linda has- tened to bring him home, but when the child once again fled, this time making a beeline for the orphanage, Linda's attitude was to "let him stay." Ana, 17, explains that when her mother "was forced" by a violent husband to abandon her household for a new man, a treacherous neighbor called the police and the children were all institutionalized. Since Ana hadn't committed any crime, she technically had the right to leave, but "there at FEBEM, they don't let a girl half-grown return to a home with a stepfather." And so each time she ran away, they would pick her up. The girl's later comments however indicate that FEBEM was not the only impediment: even after his wife's offspring were grown, the stepfather repeatedly refused them shelter or other help. Rosa, 13, upon running away from FEBEM, rather than return to her mother's household, resided with an older friend, Dione. According to the latter, "Rosa just never got along with her stepfather." Moema laments her 12-year-old son's sudden departure: "He hates his stepfather. That's why he spends so much time at FEBEM. I always say there's got to be a reason that keeps children there."

A woman's resentment of her estranged spouse may influence the fate of their children. I more than once heard a man com- plain that his ex-spouse had institutionalized the children to spite him. Moema holds the threat over her spouse's head: "Treat me bad and I'll leave you like the last time. I'll just turn the kids over to FEBEM (as she has already done with her two sons by a previous

marriage) and get myself a job." Dione, whose husband had just been jailed, sought to institutionalize her children not simply because she was materially destitute but also because she was temporarily alienated from her husband's affections by his domineer- ing maternal aunt. During this period, she took her children to a FEBEM institution, but officials stalled their entry. When Dione's husband, during Sunday visiting hours a week later, proclaimed his loyalty to her (over the aunt), she dropped llcontact with the juvenile authorities.

Institutionalization may be the result of a mother-teenager negotiation wherein factors such as juvenile delinquency, educational opportunities and the child's contribution to the domestic unit are at play. Traditionally, by the time an individual enters his teens, he acts pretty much as a free agent. Many adults in the Vila left home or got "married" by age 12 or 13." Today, however, parents may be harrassed by the juvenile authorities because of the actions of their teenagers for whom they are still legally responsible. One woman, at the urging of a new spouse who considered her sons (12 and 14) "too old to be living off their mother," telephoned the juvenile authorities to pick up her boys "in order to keep them off the street." (They fled before being located, and were back in the mother's house a week later.) Another mother, having fruitlessly admonished her 13-year-old for spending nights out, called the Juizado and requested they pick her son up. One twelve-year-old, whose mother had placed her in the orphanage "to get some schooling and keep her away from bad influences in the Vila," complained that she was reclaimed and taken back home to help out each time her mother had a new baby.

That the FEBEM installations are not always unpleasant is demonstrated by the fact that several children in the Vila had turned themselves in, preferring the institution to other possible living arrangements. To have one's own bed and regular meals are luxuries not often afforded to Vila youth. Children who have no police record (the case of most of those in the Vila) are allowed to return home on weekends and holidays. And, according to one girl, if children want to



24 ANTHROPOLOGICAL Q UAR TERL Y

prolong this freedom, "it's easy, you just run away." (According to the state records, nearly half of all children picked up by the Juizado in 1982 terminated their institutionalization by running away.)

Once the initial contact is made, people tend to euphemize their experience with FEBEM. The institution becomes a "board- ing school" (pensionato) where the mother has put herchildren to get a good education or to remove then from the Vila's questionable influence. She will seize upon examples of so-and-so's cousin who graduated from a FEBEM technical school and got a good job. She will refer to the spacious grounds of one beachfront branch of the state services or of another, surrounded by forest. If the children do not come out with diplomas, it is because "they didn't have a head for studies-but they liked the vocational activities and the forest." Linda's son was knifed at one point during his orphanage career, but since such occurrences are not uncommon in the Vila, his mother does not hold FEBEM particularly responsible for the violence. She dwells much longer on how the teachers had almost gotten her son onto the city's pro- fessional football team. Moema says she wants to give her children "the same advan- tages" she had. Although illiterate, she evaluates the skills she and her husband acquired at state orphanages as "an education:" she can embroider, he has a diploma in beekeeping. Bete, 28, recounting weekend excursions and plays organized by her orphanage, and depicts her years in the institution as extremely agreeable.

To avoid any possible stigma, a mother will insist on the exceptional character of herself and her institutionalized offspring. Thus, Ana describes in the same breath how her roommates at FEBEM had staged a riot breaking everything in sight and how the head monitor would always say that Ana was different, calm and sweet, compared with the others. Linda cited a FEBEM authority on her son's "heart of gold:" "He's not like some of those ruffians. He's there on a voluntary basis."

The attitude most pertinent to our discus- sion here, however, is that children left at FEBEM are by no means considered abandoned. A mother may not be able to muster

bus fare to visit her child more than once or twice a year; the son or daughter may be transferred from one branch to another, leaving the mother (herself often difficult to locate) confused or uninformed; or, a woman may simply not deem personal contact with her offspring a priority among her maternal responsibilities 12 Nonetheless, despite years of separation, institutionalized youngsters are felt to be at one with their blood relatives, be they siblings or parents. A 14-year-old brother and his two older sisters, who began their orphanage career nine years earlier, promptly recounted details (name, age, physical characteristics) about their two youngest siblings whom they haden't seen since entering the orphanage. Luciana, aged 9 when I first met her, told me she had three brothers and a sister and gave their names and ages. What she didn't tell me was that she hadn't seen two of her brothers in nearly three years, since they'd been given over to FEBEM. A four-year-old spontaneously answered the question I posed her mother about a daughter interned since age 6 at FEBEM: "Otilia, my sister, she's nine." To all indications, mothers encourage this sort of sibling solidarity and themselves speculate over children long since placed by the state system. Moema (Luciana's mother) says: "I know FEBEM gave Henrique [her infant son] out to a family of hairdressers. I used to know where they lived but then they moved and I lost sight of them [four years previously when the boy was about 3]. But the other day, I walked in front of the house and saw a little boy playing out front who looked a whole lot like Henrique. I'm going to go back and ask..."

State/Sub-Proletarian Interaction in Child Circulation

Although we may be convinced of the internal logic of women's attitudes concern- ing child circulation in the Vila, it would be unrealistic to view this population as though it were an autonomous tribal group. Regular jobs, school, social security, taxes, identity cards-the various mechanisms of social control are admittedly scarce in the Vila Even television is rare. Yet, located on the bottom rungs of a long-standing, rigid class




system, these scavengers of the leavings of society's more prosperous groups are acutely aware of the moral censure which surrounds their way of life. In contrast to the upwardly mobile part of the working class, however, these people do not appear to have inter- nalized many of the dominant culture's values and so censure inspires not guilt so much as inventive tactics to skirt inconvient moralism.

We see then that the FEBEM official's complaint-that mothers "use our establish- ment as though we were a private finishing school"-is in a sense quite accurate. With the government orphanage, women try to forge a policy very similar to the one they apply when dealing with foster mothers: to board out children as long as possible without giving up their mother-right in the children's moral conscience. Especially for women whose offspring are black, beyond infancy, or crippled (thus relatively unadopt- able), the orphanage may even be preferred to foster mothers because it provides no individual mother substitute to vie for the child's loyalties.

A last clarification is necessary lest our lack of comment lead the reader to suppose that State policy is more coherent than that of Vila dwellers. The particular form of child circulation found in the Vila is undoubtedly linked to the group's precarious material existence. The high infant mortality, the lack of educational opportunities and chances for economic improvement in general, the pressing demands of material survival-all

play their role in shaping the pattern of parent-child relations. They are part of a very relevant "setting" for this particular practice; they are not the result of this practice. FEBEM morality would have it that this group's mentality is responsible for its poverty, that careless mothers produce feck- less offspring, that children left by irrespons- ible parents in orphanages acquire bad habits, and become adults who are not well- integrated into society. Cause and effect however are far from clear. In terms of "social integration," does the orphanage "corrupt" more than the context from which clients are normally drawn? As to those who become "institutional dependents" who cannot "stand on their own feet," are we not dealing with people who simply resist leaving an environ- ment which supplies the vital minimum in the face of the almost inevitably sub-human living conditions of Brazil's sub-proletarians?

The "excessive" demands made by these poverty-stricken mothers on FEBEM point out a fundamental contradiction in the liberal State's objectives. The State aims at alleviating extreme suffering while maintain- ing the status quo. What this reasoning fails to take into account is that "exceptional" circumstances of penury are, for sub-proletarians, not temporary but rather lifelong. Were it to finance a sort of legal charity to provide the vital minimum to the needy, the State would have to effect a massive redistribution of resources, a measure which would reverse generations of national economic policy.

NOTES

SThese female job openings, in proportion to the available work force, have been on the decline since at least the mid-1970's (see Machado-Neto 1979). Women here, when in need of work, may spend days knocking on doors to no avail. Moreover, while several older men in the Vila, working as skilled stonemasons and carpenters, purported to earn more than three minimum salaries, women have no hope of progressing to a higher wage scale.

2 Literature on proletarian families in Brazil is not lack- ing (Durhan 1978 and 1980, Bilac 1978, Macedo 1979, Perlman 1977) and generally points to patterns quite different from those we observed in the Vila

e We use "married" in the same way it is used by the people-to indicate marital co-residence. Fewer than 10% of the couples interviewed were legally married to each other.

Umbanda is the term used to refer to local spiritist cults, generally of mixed Catholic and African inspiration.

s The markedly inferior earning potential of women may explain why, in contrast to other cases, they have relatively little domestic power, and do not band together in female centered residential units. Blumberg and Gar- cia (1977) have suggested that for stable female-headed families to exist, a certain minimum income is necessary. In Western society, "grandmother' or "consanguinear" families appear to be linked either to an agricultural land base or to some sort of economic system which allows women financial independence. As in the case of many rural blacks in America, Gonzales' geographically stable women in the Dominican Republic lay priority claims to agricultural produce over their husbands who work as itinerant industrial laborers(1969). Figueiredo, in the only




Brazilian study yet to systematically reveal matrilineal residential units, worked among black fishermen/ agriculturalists in a small Bahian village (1980). The per- durability of the female-linked residential unit in urban situations evidently implies a shift of the woman's economic resources. Either she must receive government subsidies for child support (as in the case of AFDC payments in America-see Stack 1975), or she must have viable job opportunities In the Vila we studied, women have neither.

6Among these 53 married women, two help their husbands by tending their stores, and a third, accompanied by her 12-year-old son, regularly gathers straw which her husband sells. But, in general, a man's resentment of his wife's possible independence prohibits even informal, home-based activites (such as preparing coffee or sweets to sell, sewing, or hairdressing), so often recorded inother lower-income populations (Machado Neto 1979, 1980, Prandi 1978, Haguette 1982).

7 Here, Laslett's "bastardy-prone sub-group" in pre- industrial and industrializing England provides an intrigu- ing point of reference (1980).

8 These couples are, on the whole, so young (mostly under 22) that one cannot preclude the possibility of contacts with FEBEM at a later date.

9 Women who had given children to their mothers, other maternal kin or in-laws were proportionally distributed between ages 60 and 23; the same could be said about those placing children with unrelated neighbors and comadres. The only interesting age imbalance was for mothers interning children in the state orphanage.

'o The stepchild/stepparent antagonism is sur- prisingly common in cases of child circulation among native groups of West Africa (Goody 1982) and Oceania (Carroll 1970).

11 For more details on the circulation of adolescents, see Fonseca 1982.

12 E. Goody(1982) points out a similar conflict of views between British authorities and West African parents residing in England. The latter, accustomed in their home setting to sending their school-age children to distant families in order to receive proper socialization, vocational training and sponsorship, think little of assigning their offspring in England to a nanny for years on end. Not sur- prisingly, when a conflict arises over the custody of the children, British courts have been known to consider the African parents' behavior as abandonment, deciding in favor of the nanny.

REFERENCES CITED

ARIES, PHILLIPE 1960 - L'Enfance et la vie familiale sous I'Ancien Regime. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

BADINTER, ELISABETH 1980 - L'amour en plus: histoire de ramour maternel du Xvlleme au XXeme. Paris: Flammarion.

BILAC, ELISABETE 1978 - Familias de trabalhadores: estrategias de sobrevivgncia S5o

Paulo: Simbolo.

BLUMBERG, RAE LESSER and MARCIA P. GARCIA 1977 - "The political economy of the mother-child family: a cross societal view." In Beyond the nuclear family

model. Luis Lenero Otero, ed. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications

CARROLL, VERN 1970 - Adoption in Eastern Oceania Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

DURHAN, EUNICE 1978 - A caminho da cidade. Sgo Paulo: Editora Perspectiva 1980 - A familia operaria: consciencia e ideologia. Dados 23(2): 201-213.

FIGUEIREDO, MARISA 1980 - Le r6le socio-economique des femmes chefs-de-familles." Tiers monde XXI (84): 871-891.

FONSECA, CLAUDIA 1982 - A socialac~o das criancas em um grupo de baixa renda: familia X estado X rua Annual Congress of

ANPOCS, Nova Friburgo. 1983 - Familia e classe: questionando alguns conceitos sobre a familia de baixa renda Revista do Instituto de

Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas 8 (Porto Alegre). 1984 - La violence et la rumeur: le code d'honneur dans un bidonville bresilien. Les Temps Modernes 455:

2193-2235. 1981 - L'education populaire pour un groupe de travailleurs agricoles sans terre. These de 3eme cycle,

Paris V.

GONZALEZ, NANCIE L SOLIEN 1969 - Black Carib household structure-a study of migration and modernization. Seattle: University of

Washington Press




GOODY, ESTHER 1982 - Parenthood and social reproduction: fostering and occupational roles in West Africa London: Cam-

bridge University Press

HAGUETTE, TEREZA 1982 - Os mitos da sobrevivencia Fortaleza: Editora da Universidade de Ceara.

KUZNESOF, ELIZABETH ANNE 1980 - Household composition and headship as related to changes in mode of production: Slo Paulo 1765 -

1836. Journal of comparative studies in society and history 22: 78-107.

LASLETT, PETER,K.OSTERVEEN and R.M.SMITH, eds 1980 - Bastardy and its comparative history. London: Edward Arnold.

LEWIS, OSCAR 1966 - La vida: a Puerto Rican family in the culture of poverty-San Juan and New York New York

Random House.

MACEDO, CARMEN CINIRA 1979 - A reproducio da desigualdade: o projeto de vida familial de um grupo operario. Slo Paulo:

HUCITEC.

MACHADO NETO, ZAHIDE 1979 - Mulher: vida e trabalho-um estudo de caso com mulheres faveladas. Ciencia e Cultura 31 (3):

280-289. 1980 - As meninas-sobre o trabalho da crianca e da adolescente na familia operaria Ciencia e Cultura 32 (6):

671-683.

MOYNIHAN, DANIEL P. 1965 - The Negro family: the case for national action. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

PAYNE-PRICE, A. 1981 - Etic variations of fosterage and adoption. Anthropological Quarterly 54: 134-145.

PERLMAN, JANICE 1977 - O mito da marginalidade: favelados e politica no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra

PRANDI, JOSE REGINALDO 1978 - O trabalhador por conta propria sob o capital Slo Paulo: Edic6es Simbolo.

RAMOS, DONALD 1975 - Marriage and the family in colonial Vila Rica The Hispanic American historical review 55 (2): 200-

225. 1978 - City and country: the family in Minas Gerais, 1804 - 1838. Journal of family history 3(4): 361-375.

SALEM, TANIA 1981 - Mulheres faveladas: com a venda nos olhos. In Perspectivas antropolgoicas da mulher 1. Rio de

Janeiro: Zahar.

SMITH, R.T. 1973 - The matrifocal family. In The character of kinship. J. Goody, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

STACK, CAROL 1975 - All our kin. New York: Harper.

WHITEHEAD, TONY L 1978 - Residence, kinship and mating as survival strategies: a West Indian example. Journal of marriage and the

family 40(4): 817-828.

Anthropological Quarterly January 1986, 59:1



Documents

Orphanages, Foundlings, and Foster Mothers: The System of Child Circulation in a Brazilian Squatter Settlement