The Public and Private Care of Infants

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The hardest of all work for a widowed mother who must make her own living is to care for her children while doing her work. What mistress of a home would want a cook or maid with her young infant around, the mother having to divide her time between her young and her work? Yet what is she to do with her infant? She should board her baby with someone who is capable of caring for and feeding another child than her own. Individual attention is what the infant needs. In this picture the mother has twins, one she boards with a foster mother and the other she must see put into an institution because the foster mother will take only one. The twins' mother is compelled to do this because it's the only way she can find work. The work of the care of infants in an institution is shown, and the only fault to be found is that the individual attention that an infant must have is lacking, because a nurse in such a place often has as many as 15 babies to care for single-handedly. That is where the infant suffers. It is not through any nurse's fault, but to conditions. In this case the fostered child lives while the institution child does not. 70% of asylum babies succumb while 70 out of 100 live where individual care is exercised.