Du début de la Troisième République au lendemain de la Grande Guerre, environ 3 000 enfants sont abandonnés chaque année à Paris et recueillis par l’Assistance publique. Dans la très grande majorité des cas, les parents qui se séparent de leur progéniture sont des femmes seules. Délaissées du père de l’enfant, soucieuses de cacher leur faute à leurs propres parents ou sommées par ceux-ci de réparer le déshonneur que leur maternité hors-mariage inflige à la famille, les filles-mères sont les abandonneuses emblématiques. Leur histoire est celle de la misère féminine et de l’opprobre social qui s’abat sur la maternité solitaire. À la Belle Époque, l’Assistance publique de Paris s’efforce de faciliter les abandons et d’en garantir l’anonymat, afin de dissuader les femmes désireuses de dissimuler une grossesse honteuse de recourir à des pratiques criminelles, avortement ou infanticide. Quant aux rejetons de la misère, l’administration parisienne les accueille volontiers, avec l’ambition de les arracher définitivement au milieu corrupteur qui les a vu naître, et rêve de les régénérer moralement et physiquement. Si elle ne peut que blâmer les parents qui abdiquent leurs devoirs, elle comprend pourtant de mieux en mieux leur détresse matérielle, notamment à la faveur de la grande dépression économique de la fin du XIXe siècle, et, soutenue par l’État providence naissant, elle diversifie ses politiques de prévention du délaissement d’enfants. Si, à l’aube des années 1920, elle parvient ainsi à contenir tant bien que mal les abandons de la misère, elle peine en revanche à juguler les abandons de la faute. / From the beginning of the Third Republic to the days following the Great War, about 3,000 children were abandoned each year in Paris and taken in by the public care services (Assistance publique). In the vast majority of cases, the parents who gave up their off-spring were single mothers. Forsaken by the father of their child, they were keen on hiding their shame from their own parents or sternly ordered to redeem the dishonour their out-of-wedlock pregnancies had visited on their own families; unmarried mothers epitomized abandonment. Their stories are those of feminine misery and the social infamy attached to single motherhood. Throughout the Belle Epoque (1870-1914), the Assistance publique services strove to facilitate abandonments and to guarantee their anonymity in order to keep the women willing to hide their shameful pregnancies to resort to criminal practices (abortion or infanticide). As for the progeny of misery, the Parisian child welfare authorithy willingly took them in as a means to the avowed goal of removing them from the corrupting milieu where they were born; and with the express dream of regenerating them both morally and physically. The Assistance publique services could not but blame the parents who shirked their duties, still they took into better account their dire straits – especially during the great economic depression of the end of the 19th century – and, supported by the budding welfare state, they varied their policies towards the prevention of child-abandonment. If, at the dawn of the 1920s, they more or less managed to contain the numbers of misery-induced abandonments, they failed to curb those induced by guilt

The study examines the occurrence of children born out of wedlock in four parishes belonging to the current Karlskrona municipality during the period 1875–1925. The parishes surveyed are Fridlevstad, Rödeby, Tving and Karlskrona city-parish. The period is divided into two parts where the first includes the years 1875–1890 and the second part includes the years 1910–1925. The proportion of children with unknown/known fathers, the mothers' occupations, the fathers' occupations, and the mothers' age are also used as survey variables. The proportion of known fathers increases significantly between the study periods, which could be explained by a reduced internal social control, while the study shows that the introduction of a child welfare officer in 1918 resulted in an increased proportion of known fathers. The mothers' occupational designations change between the periods, for example, the proportion of maids decreases while other occupations are added. In the city-parish, professions such as washerwoman and waitress are added during the second period. The proportion of women working in the industry also increases between the survey periods. The increased proportion of professions, especially in the city-parish, could be linked to the demographic transition. As more people settle in a city, new needs emerge and thus also new occupational categories. The age of the mothers decreases between the study periods. When it comes to class affiliation, it can be noted that most of the fathers and mothers belonged to the working class. However, the proportion of fathers belonging to the middle class was higher than the proportion of mothers belonging to the middle class.