The United States continued the tradition of the British who used orphans as little more than slave labor. We have documentation of the first of this kind occuring in 1636 with a seven year-old boy in the colony of Jamestown. However, with the Industrial Revolution and the prominence of child labor in factories thanks to writers such as Charles Dickens who brought the problem to the forefront with his novels, ideas about adoption began to change as life got a bit easier and Americans grew a bit wealthier.
The idea that the child’s interests should be put before the interests of the adoptive parents’ was first institutionalized in 1851 with the passage of the Massachusetts Adoption of Children Act that became the first US law to protect children in adoption situations. The adoptive parents now had to prove they had the consent of the biological parents to raise the child, and the adoptive parents had to prove they had the ability to raise the child and educate them.
While this was progress, progress got derailed as the American Civil War consumed all of America. Orphanages were overrunning and children on the streets of big cities in America were overwhelming. The Orphan Train idea began, which shipped almost 200,000 children from the big cities in the east to families in the west. However, this was basically shipping the children to be indentured servants out there as well. This was the largest migration of children in the history of the world, and so many became farm laborers and household servants, exploited and abused, that finally America took note. New laws were passed helping orphans, and Minnesota pioneered the closed adoption process with a law in 1917 where records were limited and adoptive parents were vetted.
AIM Adoptions in Houston notes that the Progressive movement continued in the United States, taking orphans and adoption laws with it. President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the nuclear family should be of the highest priority. However, many resisted the idea, instead preferring their own families above others.
After World War II, a new problem arose that hadn’t been present before: the growth in illegitimate births, which fueled the need for adoptive families. However, due to the past precedence of secrecy in adoptions that stemmed from the Orphan Train movement, adoption records were sealed. Furthermore, while societal morals were loosened, unwed mothers were still looked down upon, which led to many women hiding their pregnancies from friends and family and giving up their babies with no chance to see them in the future.
As society and technology continued to grow, change, and progress, ideas about adoption changed again. AIM Adoptions in Houston notes that a push was made for open adoption so that adopted children could know their birth parents and birth parents could know their children. The number of unplanned pregnancies dropped as education efforts and birth control methods spread, as well as abortion was legalized. Furthermore, more unwed mothers were opting to keep their babies, as society was more accepting of this and pushed for the development of the family system.
