The Child Industry: Unpacking Adoption in America

We've finally returned to the internet – against our better judgment (just kidding…unless). Olivia welcomes us by kicking off our first three-parter on the US adoption and foster care systems. Episode one revolves around the history of adoption in the US.

Despite other countries formalizing adoption laws in the 20th century, the US passed its first adoption law in 1851 with The Massachusetts Adoption of Children Act. This law enabled the legal adoption of children in probate court, but don't let the early action fool you. The first and most famous instance of mass adoption came from Charles Loring Brace's orphan trains in 1854. When Brace saw orphaned immigrant children wandering through the streets of New York, he had an idea. Brace believed that the only way to help these children was to find them homes in the country with white, protestant families. If you've been following along with our podcast for a while, then I'm sure you can guess that this plan had nefarious undertones. Brace dismantled immigrant families, specifically Irish, Polish, and Italian families whose children could be adopted to become white-passing. Under the guise that fresh air and country living would improve the lives of these children, he packed hundreds of children on trains that traversed the US. At each train stop, the children would stand like cattle as prospective families examined them to take home. While many children found loving homes this way, a significant amount was used for free labor. Little effort was taken to keep track of these children's origins, as paperwork – if it did exist – was riddled with errors from parents whose native language wasn't English. The train system ran for 75 years and transported 200,000 children across the US.

However, it was still non-traditional to adopt a child that was not blood-related. Family values influenced social workers, who rarely suggested children be removed from their homes (even for unwed mothers). Instead, Julia Lathrop, the first chief of the Children's Bureau, attempted to establish a Mothers' Pension. The pension's purpose was to subsidize childcare and make it easier to raise children. While well-intended, the program was grossly underfunded, and the "worthy" recipients could barely make money last. 

But clearly, values of family preservation are no longer shared in the US. What could have made policies change so significantly towards modern adoption? The answer lies in the cultural bombshell, Georgia Tann. Tann was a prolific adoption coordinator operating out of the Shelby County branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Due to her firm belief that poor people shouldn't have children, she partook in unconventional means of acquiring adoptable children. For example, she hired doctors and nurses at hospitals and women's homes to scope for children they could coerce mothers into placing in Tann's care. Sometimes they would present women in labor with "routine paperwork" that would relinquish their parental rights to Tann. She even kidnapped children in poorer communities from homes, churches, and daycares. She sold 2,000 children and let 500 die in her care. The lasting impact of her time in Tennessee is making closed adoptions commonplace. Her reasons for doing so were, of course, entirely motivated by covering her tracks. Still, even the Child Welfare League advocated for closed adoptions to "protect adoptees" from poor neurotic mothers.

But in the previous examples of child exploitation, the victims were predominately white and non-disabled. There are many examples of children of color being exploited by the child welfare system, one such instance being the mass adoption of Native American children. Here, the Child Welfare League of America rears its head again by facilitating the Indian Adoption Project, whose goal was to take Native children from "unfit homes" and place them in the homes of white, nuclear families. Social workers would use any justification for child removal, including taking a child to the hospital for a rash being symptomatic of neglect. Approximately 25-35% of all Native children were taken from their homes, and 85% were placed in non-white homes between 1941 and 1967. The intention was assimilation and eradication of Native American culture. Eventually, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 was passed to prioritize Native child placement into Native homes – an act considered the golden standard of child protection. Though the struggle to place children into supportive homes is far from over.

We talk about all this and more in our most recent episode. The next episode will cover the US foster care system, and we'll conclude by discussing international adoption. We hope you enjoy the first episode… as much as possible.