To explore meanings attached to children in Mexican society, this article examines two changing aspects of child circulation, a widespread reproductive disruption to the families of Mexico City's working poor. In the late 1890s, a rapid rise in admissions to the public foundling home was matched by a striking increase in retrievals. At the other end of the social spectrum, growing preference for adopting infants and young children indicates that adoption was becoming an acceptable means of forming families among the middle and upper classes. Changes in welfare policy encouraged both trends. This convergence of family practice and public policy illuminates transitions in concepts of infancy and early childhood informed by a consolidating ethic of protected childhood. These dynamics prefigured the emergence of child protection legislation in the 1910s and the expansion of welfare services in the 1920s and 1930s.
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