'''Child abandonment''' is the practice of abandoning offspring outside of legal adoption.  Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness. 

The abandoned child is called a '''foundling''' or '''throwaway''' (as opposed to a runaway or an orphan).

==Child abandonment in real life==

Poverty is often a root cause of child abandonment. Persons in cultures with poor social welfare systems who are not financially capable of taking care of a child are more likely to abandon him/her.  Political conditions, such as difficulty in adoption proceedings, may also contribute to child abandonment, as can the lack of institutions, such as orphanages, to take in children whom their parents can not support. Societies with strong social structures and liberal adoption laws tend to have lower rates of child abandonment.

Historically, many cultures practice abandonment of infants, called "exposure."  Although such children would survive if taken up by others, exposure is often considered a form of prostitution.

Early laws governing child abandonment often prescribed that the person who had taken up the child, either to adopt or to raise as a slave, was entitled to the child.  This both discourages the practice of exposure and encourages strangers to take up exposed children.<ref>
[http://libro.uca.edu/vcode/vg4-4.htm The Visigothic Code: (Forum judicum), Book IV: Concerning Natural Lineage Title IV: Concerning Foundlings]</ref>

Today, abandonment of a child is considered to be a serious welfare concerns.  For example, in the Georgia, it is a misdemeanor to willfully and voluntarily abandon a child, and a felony to abandon one's child ''and'' leave the state.  In 1981, Georgia's treatment of abandonment as a felony when the defendant leaves the state was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.<ref>''Jones v. Helms'', .</ref>

==Child abandonment in literature== <!-- This section is linked from Self-fulfilling prophecy -->

Foundlings, who may be orphans, can combine many advantages to a plot: mysterious antecedents, leading to plots to discover them; high birth and lowly upbringing. Foundlings have appeared in literature in some of the oldest known tales.<ref>oracles that the child will cause harm; the mother's desire to conceal her illegitimate child, often after rape by a god; or spite on the part of people other than the parents, such as sisters and mothers-in-law in such fairy tales as ''The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird''. Poverty usually features as a cause only with the case of older children, who can survive on their own. Indeed, most such individuals are of royal or noble birth; their abandonment means they grow up in ignorance of their true social status.<ref>Josepha Sherman, ''Once upon a Galaxy'' p 55-6 ISBN 0-87483-387-6</ref>

One of the earliest surviving examples of child abandonment in popular culture is that of biological mother.

In many tales, such as ''Snow White'', the child is actually abandoned by a servant who had been given orders to put the child to death.  

Children are often abandoned with birth tokens, which act as Le Fresne'' reveals the brocade and the ring she was abandoned with, her mother and sister recognize her; this makes her a suitable bride for the man whose mistress she had been.<ref>Francis James Child, ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'', v 2, p 68, Dover Publications, New York 1965</ref>
right|thumb|The children of Queen Blondine and of her sister, Princess Brunette, picked up by a Corsair after seven days at sea; illustration by [[Walter Crane to the fairy tale ''Princess Belle-Etoile'']]

From Oedipus onward, Greek and Roman tales are filled with exposed children who escaped death to be reunited with their families -- usually, as in Longus's ''Daphnis and Chloe'', more happily than in Oedipus's case.  Grown children, having been taken up by strangers, were usually recognized by tokens that had been left with the exposed baby:  in Ion'', Ion, believing him to be her husband's illegitimate child, when a priestess reveals the birth-tokens that show that Ion is her own, abandoned infant.  

This may reflect the widespread practice of child abandonment in their cultures.  On the other hand, the motif is continued through literature where the practice is not widespread.  William Shakespeare used the abandonment and discovery of Perdita in ''The Winter's Tale'', and Edmund Spenser reveals in the last Canto of Book 6 of ''The Faerie Queen'' that the character Pastorella, raised by shepherds, is in fact of noble birth.  Henry Fielding, in one of the first novels, recounted ''The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling''.  Ruth Benedict, in studying the Zuni, found that the practice of child abandonment was unknown, but featured heavily in their folktales.<ref>Maria Tatar, ''The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales'', p60, ISBN 0-691-06722-8</ref>

'''捨て子'''（'''すてご'''）とは、想定外の妊娠や愛人、生活苦、育児放棄といった親の都合で、路上や他人の家、児童養護施設等にこっそり置き去られた子供を指す。 <!--また、親が子供を残して去ることも一種の捨て子と考えられる。-->日本のマスコミでは、捨て子という表現を避け、'''赤ちゃん置き去り'''と言うことが多い。

== 概要 ==
捨てられた子供はPTSDなどの疾患を病み、悪い場合はアメリカの未成年の男女による南米などの発展途上国では貧困ゆえの生活上の口減らしなどの理由で捨てられる子供が増加する傾向にある。
-->
私生児などをこのポストに入れて病院側に養育を委託するという措置がとられるようになった。

これにならって日本でもカトリック系の慈恵病院で赤ちゃんポストが2007年5月10日に設置された。世評では「身寄りの無い子供を助けるのは人間としてあるべき姿」「単なる善意と愛情だけではかえって捨て子を誘発する危険がある」などの賛否両論に分かれている。

== 救護・養育の歴史 ==

==戸籍==
捨て子はすでに出生届けが出され、戸籍が作成されている可能性が高いが、身元不明であることが多く、本名、本籍地、親の氏名などが不明であることが多い。
そのような場合には家庭裁判所に就籍許可を申し立て二重戸籍になる可能性を容認して戸籍を作成する。
本籍地は孤児院などの住所になることが多く、生年月日は推定される年に拾われた日を誕生日として設定されることが多い。苗字などについては申してた人物や保護者などから取ったりする。
赤ちゃんポストの場合は新生児への命名は熊本市長が行うとしている。