Abstract
In the mid-eighteenth century, the association between “gentry” and “wealth” reemerged as a topic of relevance in the literature of the reason of State, in which, by extension, a number of controversies about the best ways to make use of abandoned children took root. In the Americas, as in Europe, the emphasis on the usefulness of unwanted children indicated a new slant in which the religious significance of caring for children was subordinated to state interests. A discussion is presented of the meanings of the reforms of care for unwanted children at a time of an overall increase in rates of abandonment and, simultaneously, of indebtedness of many of the institutions where they were taken in.
unwanted children; reason of State; Portuguese enlightened reforms