Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Each of Rousseau’s 5 children born to Thérèse Le Vasseur, a laundry maid in his residential hotel, was abandoned to a foundling home shortly after birth. The writer whose works had extolled the child-centered family explained that he had insisted on this “solution,” over Thérèse’s protests, because he was too poor to provide for children, and, besides, they would have interfered with his study & work. Confessions
