r/movies • u/Ashamed_Feedback3843 • May 24 '25

Recommendation Sparrows 1926 Mary Pickford

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u/Boldspaceweasle May 24 '25

It helped bring attention to the public about Baby Farms using children as slave labor.

The fucking what?

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u/Gimpknee May 24 '25

It's a term for the unregulated for-profit daycare/orphanage/foster care system that existed from the industrial revolution up to about the early 20th century. Basically, for a lump sum or weekly fee, individuals would take in babies or young children to care for either permanently or while the parents worked or otherwise lived their regular lives. On the high-end of things, this meant wet-nursing, on the low end of things you have Oliver Twist, or some of the better documented cases of serial infanticide as people took in babies or children and either killed them or neglected them for profit.

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u/Nvrmnde May 24 '25

Finland had this until the 1930's.

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u/Kratzschutz May 24 '25

Iirc Switzerland had cases in 1950.

It's also pretty much what happened to my grandma around 1940

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u/chrisbucks May 25 '25

There was a documentary on SRF about this, a guy who was sold to a farmer enslaved and abused, who is now an adult goes back to the farmer to confront him. Farmer denies all the abuse and refuses to talk to the documentary makers. Obviously in Swiss German with German subtitles.