Adoption Uncovered

Orphan Annie is a classic portrayal of orphanage life from a time in our past, but do places like that still exist? Should they? Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s in America, orphanages were a lot like the place from Annie. City buildings where kids weren’t treated well and the meanest ones got the most food weren’t far from the truth.  (1)

Does America Have Orphanages?

Traditional orphanages don’t exist in America anymore, though there are situations where children are housed in smaller group homes. (2) Most children who need a home outside of their first families are in foster homes rather than with a group of other children. (3) Many other parts of the world still have orphanages where children bunk together, eat together in a group setting, and even attend class together.

We Know Orphanages Don’t Serve Kids Well

Over time scientists have studied the effects of long-term orphanage stays on children and found that the deficits they experience abound. (4) Everything from their emotional well-being to their intelligence can be affected. One of the extreme cases happened in Romania when women were encouraged to have more children than they could afford (5). The image of Romanian orphans alone in individual cribs banging their heads against crib bars because their caregivers were too overwhelmed to hold them (6) is hard to forget. (7) We have learned a lot since that period. Romania is one country that has set a target date to close all of its orphanages, even though it has been a long hard path to close them and they are still working on that goal. (8) All over the world countries are moving away from having orphanages in favor of trying to reunite children with family or moving to a foster care style system. (9)

Today’s Orphanages Are Not Full of Orphans

One reason this is possible is that according to statistics that are fairly well documented about 80% of the children currently in orphanages aren’t pure orphans. (10) Most of the children housed in these institutions have at least one if not two surviving parents out in the world. Often in these countries, poverty is widespread. Parents overwhelmed with trying to raise their family with limited resources may choose to send one or two of their children to live in an orphanage. (11) At least in an orphanage, children are likely to have a bed and food available to them. They may even have access to education. Often the intention is not to cut ties with these children and send them to another family, but to alleviate some financial pressure on the first family for a period of time until they are ready to welcome those children back home. It can even be the case that some families who offer children for adoption think they are signing on for the same service the orphanage offers: a way to allow their children to grow up and be educated, and then return to their family of origin. (12) This understanding can muddy the water around adoption and confuse it with the services of the orphanage. The push to move away from orphanages to more support for first families and a network of foster families would provide clarity and allow the children who genuinely need homes a clearer path to access one.

Some People Who Want to Help Children in Orphanages, Hurt

Of the things standing in the way of more countries moving from orphanages toward a foster care type system, one of them comes from the hands of people who want to help. Some organizations allow tourists from wealthier countries to spend time volunteering in orphanages. (13) After hugging babies and playing games with children these tourists may provide money or donations to the institutions. Some people who run orphanages have found that this is a good source of income, (14) so they are hesitant to move away from this system to a more permanent way of getting these children the care they need. (15) If you want to do volunteer work on a short-term basis abroad, steer clear of helping out in an orphanage. You may be hurting more than you are helping. Donations to orphanages should be looked at in the same light. Since we know that long-term care in orphanages has negative influences on children we should be searching for ways to help their first families directly or support organizations that are helping to educate children while allowing them to stay with their first families. (16)

Imagining a World Full of Children in Healthy Families

While orphanages still exist today, it is not beyond imagining a day coming soon when they will be a thing of the past. Organizations like the UN have called for the universal deinstitutionalization of all children. (17)There will always be children in need of care outside of their first families and poor families searching for ways to provide for all of their members. (18) Those of us who want to help should be seeking out and supporting organizations that will help the world go forward into a reality where all children are cared for in a healthy family situation, whether that is their family of birth or another one who loves them just as much. Hopefully, the clock is ticking down to the end of children living in dormitories and toward all children having a bed in a room in a healthy home.

Sources

1. Keiger, Dale. “The Rise and Demise of the American Orphanage.” Johns Hopkins Magazine, pages.jh.edu/jhumag/496web/orphange.html#:~:text=Conditions%20varied%2C%20but%20tended%20not,sometimes%20had%20their%20heads%20shaved.
2. Rivard, Meghan. “Do orphanages exist in the United States?” adoption.com, 27 Jan. 2024, adoption.com/orphanages-in-the-us.
3. ” Fact Sheets U.S. ADOPTION & FOSTER CARE STATISTICS.” Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute , http://www.ccainstitute.org/resources/fact-sheets .
4. “Orphanage Volunteering – Why to say no.” icmec.org, http://www.icmec.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Orphanage-Volunteering-_-Why-to-say-no.pdf .
5. Steavenson, Wendell. “Ceausescu’s children.” the Guardian, 10 Dec. 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/10/-sp-ceausescus-children.
6. Smith, Craig S. “Romania’s Orphans Face Widespread Abuse, Group Says.” NY times, 10 May 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/world/europe/10romania.html .
7. Aslanian, Sasha. “Researchers Still Learning from Romania’s Orphans.” NPR, 16 Sept. 2006, http://www.npr.org/2006/09/16/6089477/researchers-still-learning-from-romanias-orphans.
8. Dumitrescu, Radu. “Romania’s minister of family announces intention to close orphanages, a 16-year unfulfilled promise.” Romania-Insider.com, 9 June 2022, http://www.romania-insider.com/romania-plans-close-orphanages-2022.
9. Lu, Joanne. “Why There’s A Global Outcry Over Volunteering At Orphanages.” NPR, 13 Jan. 2020, http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/13/779528039/why-theres-a-global-campaign-to-stop-volunteers-from-visiting-orphanages.
10. Batha, Emma. Reuters, 13 Nov. 2018, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1NJ0AG/.
11. Kim, Juno. ““Most children in orphanages aren’t orphans.”.” Runaway Juno, runawayjuno.com/runaway-tales/orphanage-volunteering/ .
12. Joyce, Kathryn. The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption. PublicAffairs, 2013.
13. “Next Generation Nepal, Orphanage Trafficking and Orphanage Voluntourism.” Better Care Network, 2014, bettercarenetwork.org/sites/default/files/Orphanage%20Trafficking%20and%20Orphanage%20Voluntourism%20FAQs.pdf.
14. “Haiti’s “Orphanage Crisis”: Why Orphanages are Full of Children with Families .” MyLifeSpeaks.com, 5 Dec. 2023, http://www.mylifespeaks.com/post/haiti-s-orphanage-crisis-why-haitian-orphanages-are-full-of-children-with-families.
15. Rosenberg, Tina. “The Lasting Pain of Children Sent to Orphanages, Rather Than Families.” NY Times, 16 Oct. 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/opinion/orphanages-children-latin-america.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap .
16. “Most Orphans are Not Orphans.” Miracle Foundation, 29 July 2022,  www.miraclefoundation.org/most-orphans-are-not-orphans/.
17. Harlow, Elizabeth. “Children’s Rights, Deinstitutionalisation and the Development of Foster Care Services across the World.” Tandfonline.com, 5 June 2020, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09503153.2021.1909719.
18. “We Must Provide a Family, Not Rebuild Orphanages.” hrw.org, 13 Mar. 2023, http://www.hrw.org/report/2023/03/13/we-must-provide-family-not-rebuild-orphanages/consequences-russias-invasion