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Adoption in America before the Twentieth Century

In the early days of the nineteenth century (1800s), Americans had a vastly different view of the role of children, both as a part of society and as part of the family; especially when compared to the view that we have of the roles of children in our society today. During the nineteenth century, it was commonplace to find children from working class families in the homes of others working as either an apprentice or as an indentured servant of the upper class. Parents would often do this because they felt that it was their responsibility to instill work values and useful work skills into their children. If the child was an indentured servant, the parents would also receive additional income for the family in exchange for the labor of the child while the child also gained useful work skills. Eventually, this became the traditional way of handling the children of parents who were unable to provide for the care of the children themselves. During this time period, parents did not expect these arrangements, either as an apprentice or as an indentured servant, to last indefinitely (however, this does not include African American children in the south before the American Civil War; in those cases, if you were born a slave, odds were that you remained a slave, at least until the slaves were emancipated during the war). Most parents, especially in the latter part of the nineteenth century, intended on having their children move back home someday after their apprenticeship or indentured servitude was completed. This means that during the early nineteenth century, children would often only be “adopted” by another family for a short period of time and usually as a means to provide an education for the child and an additional income for the family of the child.[1]

Apprenticeship

One example of this would be the children that were sent to live with another family could work on that family’s farm. This work would typically only last for a few seasons and then the child would go home to his or her parents. Another example would be the children were sent out to apprentice to a master of a particular artisan skill. The master would provide for the needs of the child, such as feeding and clothing the child, and in exchange, the child would work for the master and learn his skill or craft. Once the apprenticeship was complete, the child would typically return home to his or her parents. A child typically would only be adopted permanently by another family, or someone else in their extended family, if one or both of the parents of the child died.

Turning to Adoption

This practice of making the adoption permanent only when the parents died began to change in the latter part of the nineteenth century when the importance of motherhood began to increase. As it became more and more important for women to have children and be a mother, the desire to have children in the home began to increase. This led to an increase in couples having their own children and to an increase in the couples who could not have their own children for various reasons and thus sought for an adoption to fill that void of not having any children.

The Idea of Orphanages

The increase in the number of couples who wanted children to call their own led to an increase in how much people cared about the welfare of all children in general, including the children of others. At the same time, more parents wanted to permanently place their children in the homes of others because they realized that another family might be in a better situation to provide for the needs of their children. The idea of orphan asylums, or orphanages, came to existence in the late nineteenth century because of this parental desire to provide a better future for their children, coupled along with society’s new found desire to provide for the best interest of the child.[2] Society’s new desire to act in the best interest of all children, including the children of others, led to more laws being passed to protect the children. These new laws would lead to children being removed from bad situations such as abuse or incest and then being placed as wards of the state in orphan asylums. These early orphanages were originally designed to improve the kind of life that the child would be living, and not simply replace the family that they had.[3]

Return to Adoption History

References

  1. ↑ Susan L. Porter, ed. E. Wayne Carp, “A Good Home: Indenture and Adoption in Nineteenth-Century Orphanages,” Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, The University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, Michigan: 2002), 27-28.
  2. ↑ I feel that it is important to note that the term asylum, during the late nineteenth century, did not have the same negative connotation that it does today. The word “asylum” actually describes a safe place or a place of refuge, and is not simply a “place where we stick crazy people.”
  3. ↑ Susan L. Porter, ed. E. Wayne Carp, “A Good Home: Indenture and Adoption in Nineteenth-Century Orphanages,” Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, The University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, Michigan: 2002), 28-29.