Another aspect of the expostos--and I don't know whether this has come up earlier or not, so please forgive my possible duplication--is something I learned on a short visit to Santa Maria last week (with Nancy Jean Baptiste, in fact!). Various pirate raids preceded some increases in the number of children left on the wheel. No doubt some rapes occurred during these raids, and the women probably abandoned the children rather than kept them as perhaps painful reminders or even because of the stigma the children might incur as the invaders' offspring.
Though I haven't seen evidence, I have heard stories, both in the Azores and from other countries such as Croatia, that the children resulting from rapes were officially abandoned and sometimes given to their birth mothers after they officially abandoned them. Thus, the mothers could in fact raise their own children (and, presumably, be able to nurse at the time) without the shame of having been raped or their children experiencing the stigma of bastards of pirate invaders. Life could go on almost as though nothing had happened. However, I do suspect that everyone knew the real story, and the leaving of the child on the wheel and placement of the abandoned child with a wet nurse (the birth mother at times) was simply a device for maintaining social acceptance for the mother and gaining that acceptance for the child. Yes, many knew, but in time some would "forget" and others would be born never knowing the story. Today, there is much less public shame in having a baby without marriage or being a single mother, so it's easy to overlook the social repercussions that could occur in the past. However, things were not so different "in the old days." Girls did get pregnant without being married. Extra-marital affairs happened. Priests did not always mind their vows. Things happened, and villages needed a mechanism for keeping things going, which meant reinforcing the prevailing social standards no matter what actually happened. The wheel was both a salvation for an abandoned child but also a way for adults to maintain their positions in the village. Can you imagine how standards would have collapsed if the truth were ever publicly acknowledged and accepted? Tomás -- For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores.
