A History of Placing-Out: The Orphan Trains

Abstract

One of the central issues of poverty with which American society has struggled involves assisting people who are poor without making those people indefinitely dependent on public support. Traditionally, providing assistance to individuals whose poverty was due to circumstances beyond their control has encountered less resistance than helping other groups of people. Though children generally have been categorized as deserving, the motivation for providing assistance to them has not always appeared to reflect that sentiment. This article examines the development, implementation, and discontinuance of placing-out programs for poor children from New York City. These programs, operated between 1853 and 1930, placed approximately 150,000 children with families for family foster care and adoption.Placing-Out: The Orphan Train StrategyIn the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Loring Brace [1880] and the Children's Aid Society (CAS) [1893] argued that the agency's programs would fill an existing gap in services by providing for children for whom there was no room in orphanages and those for whom an orphanage was inappropriate. Brace and CAS also argued that institutional care did not prepare children for life in the community and that most children did not want to go to orphanages. Orphanages were criticized for their selective admission policies, generally made on the basis of race/ethnicity and religion; their use of harsh discipline systems; their administrative freedom to discharge children arbitrarily; their overcrowding; their inability to accommodate the growing number of children in need of care as a result of immigration and the Civil War; and the disproportionate number of immigrant children in placement [Bremner 1970; Downs & Sherraden 1983; Kitterson 1968; Letchworth 1893].Despite the diversity of services offered by CAS, the placing-out system is the one program for which the agency and Brace are most often remembered, credited, and criticized. This was the most ambitious and controversial program undertaken by CAS. Although the concept of placing children with families to whom the children were not related originated neither with CAS nor in the United States, the agency's placing-out system was significant in several ways. It was the first extensive and systematic placing-out program initiated by a charitable organization [Wheeler 1983]. In addition, the program differed from the indenture system in which children were legally apprenticed to families and paid for their work. One policy of the CAS program was hat the agency or the biological parents would retain custody of any child placed unless adoption was requested by the foster parents and legal requirements for adoption were met. Another important distinction from indenture was the program's emphasis on finding families for children as opposed to the employment arrangements common to indenture programs [Brace 1880; Children's Aid Society 1893; Langsam 1964; Nelson 1987; Young & Marks 1990].Children were selected for the program in various ways. Some children were already participating in one of the agency's other programs. Some were referred from the courts, juvenile facilities, and other children's institutions. Some parents brought their children to the agency for placement. In addition, CAS's community agents, who worked in neighborhoods to encourage children to participate in other programs offered by the organization, also recruited children for placing-out [Children's Aid Society 1893; Nelson 1985; Wheeler 1983].Children chosen to be placed out were considered orphaned, homeless, abandoned, dependent, or neglected. In reality, onlyfew were orphans, and many others had at least one living parent and housing of some sort. Unless children were actual orphans, parents were required to give their permission for the child's participation in the placement program. Children who were thought to be incorrigible, who appeared to be sickly, or who were physically or mentally handicapped were generally not accepted for participation. …