Neglected children and neglectful parents

Abstract

It seems to me quite impossible for those who do not, or who cannot, keep out of sight of the poorer classes, to resist the sad importunity with which the facts of life in our back streets and tenements for ever plead for the waif and stray, the homeless orphan, or, what is perhaps worse, the child whose only home is a den of drunkenness or vice. It is equally impossible to deny the difficulty of knowing how to interfere wisely to any greater extent than is done at present. I need not dwell on those difficulties in appealing to this Society, whose volumes are full of essays discussing them. The problem is to avoid demoralising kindness on the one hand, and doctrinaire inaction on the other. My purpose is to remind the public of one line of effort which avoids either of those extremes?a line of effort which is not merely consistent with, but essential to, any attempt whatsoever to deal with this subject?a line of effort at present almost wholly neglected in the United Kingdom, and especially in Ireland. Although in our own City of Dublin there is reason to believe that the evil of child neglect is more acute than in any other quarter of Ireland.