House of Mother and Child

HOUSE OF MOTHER AND CHILD, an institution of Maternity and Infancy Protection, where pregnant women are admitted for several months before and after childbirth. Houses of Mother and Child exist in bourgeois states and here in the USSR. In bourgeois states, Houses of Mother and Child are usually maintained at the expense of private charity and have the goal, mainly, of helping those "illegitimate mothers" whom bourgeois legislation on family and marriage places outside the law; they are homeless, and need often drives them into the ranks of prostitution. Such Houses of Mother and Child are numbered in the units in bourgeois states and have some significance in the matter of helping the "illegitimate." Most of them accept the "illegitimate" after childbirth. The largest Houses of Mother and Child are located in Berlin, in Neukölln (headed by Prof. Orgler), and in Paris—Maison maternelle de Seine et Oise. In Tsarist Russia, the role of the House of Mother and Child was performed in part by government foundling homes. In Moscow, at the Lepekhin Maternity Hospital and in Presnya, during the imperialist war, two Houses of Mother and Child arose with the admission of pregnant women before childbirth and retention for 2–3 months after childbirth. Houses of Mother and Child in the USSR after the October Revolution began to be organized in two types: the 1st—where pregnant women were admitted two months before childbirth and 2 months after; the 2nd—where mothers with infants aged from two months to one year were admitted. In the latter, the mother, while continuing to breastfeed the infant, went to work daily. The second type of House of Mother and Child, which provided the opportunity to combine labor and motherhood, was soon liquidated—its functions passed to the crèches. The 1st type of House of Mother and Child saw development. Dynamics for the RSFSR: 1918—10 Houses of Mother and Child; 1919—17; 1920—99; 1921—125; 1922—237; 1923—110; 1924—91; 1925—80; 1926—94 and 1927—106. A whole series of houses has a mixed character, i.e., performs the functions only of a House of the Infant, but recently such houses are being reorganized into the pure type of House of Mother and Child. At the present time, pregnant women who are in difficult housing conditions are admitted to the House of Mother and Child, and dismissed domestic workers are also subject to mandatory admission (according to the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of 8/II-1928). More often, admission is performed only after childbirth. Upon discharge from the House of Mother and Child, the organizations of Maternity and Infancy Protection try to place the mother in a job, find a room, or provide support in the future through the Councils of Social Assistance. More often, mothers are transferred to "Dormitories for Homeless Mothers." For the time of childbirth, the parturient woman is transferred to a maternity hospital. The House of Mother and Child, by preventing abandonment, is a school of proper care and feeding of the nursing infant and thereby performs the function of combating the mortality of nursing infants of the most threatened group—up to 2 months. A portion of foundlings (up to 30%) is also sent to the House of Mother and Child from the House of the Infant, to whom mothers give their excess breast milk. Admission to the House of Mother and Child is usually performed after a preliminary examination by a delegate of the housing and material living conditions of the mother and a medical examination of her. Women suffering from venereal diseases or an open form of tuberculosis are not admitted to the House of Mother and Child. The House of Mother and Child consists of two departments—women's and children's. The women's department consists of a bedroom for pregnant women, a separate one for mothers, a room for the examination and treatment of women, an isolation ward for sick or not yet examined mothers, a dining room, a reading room, and a bathroom. The children's department consists of children's wards, an isolation ward, a bathroom, a room for feeding children, a doctor's office, a head nurse's room, and utility rooms. There are 20 beds for women and 20 for children in the House of Mother and Child. Personnel: a pediatrician and a head nurse; the rest of the staff is small, because pregnant women and mothers must serve themselves (with the exception of heavy physical labor), also taking turns on duty in the nursery.