Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 52, No. 5, Ed. 1 Sunday, August 8, 1954 Page: 36 of 48
forty eight pages : ill. ; page 21 x 16 in. Digitized from 35 mm. microfilm.View a full description of this newspaper.
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It’s Easier
by K. C. Jerome
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to Adopt
an Older Child
THE SOCIAL WORKER and supervisor of the adoption agency then review
backgrounds, personalities, and intelligence of the children available
for adoption. They think they have a lad who would be very happy
with the prospective parents and who would be an ideal son for them.
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Thousands of boys and girls past infancy
are living out their lives in institutions
because nobody wants them.
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Q EHIND THE confusing welter of charges
D and counter-charges regarding the na-
tion-wide shortage of children for adoption,
there lies this rather startling fact:
Thousands of children now living out their
young lives in footer homes and institutions
. could be made available for adoption by the
countless couples whose deepest yearning is
to have a family.
Perhaps three out of four couples who ap-
ply to adoption agencies for infants must be
turned away to face life childless. Yet tens
of thousands of these couples could find the
children they long for in foster homes, hos-
pitals, and children’s shelters.
Who are these children who are growing
up with neither father nor mother in the
midst of so many childless couples eager to
become foster parents?
They are older children who have never
been adopted because no one has wanted
them, because they have some physical or
mental handicap, or because they cannot be
adopted until some legal or social knot which
binds up their futures is untied.
Take as an example five-year-old Marie,
who has wide brown eyes and an enchanting
smile. She has no father and her mother has
been seriously ill in a mental hospital for
some time. But because doctors and lawyers
are reluctant to classify the woman as in-
curable, thereby making her daughter adopt-
able, Marie is being deprived of a normal
childhood._____
No one can tell the exact number of these
older children who are “accumulating in in-
stitutions and private homes with little like-
lihood of any other future.” But the Child
Welfare League of America says there may
well be a “reservoir” of 80,000 institution-
alized youngsters who might better be grow-
ing up with their own adopted families.
Of course, 80,000 is only a fraction of the
total number of young Americans being
raised in institutional homes of one type or
another. And it should be understood that
the overwhelming majority of these children
are living in institutions only temporarily
and are not adoptable for a variety of good
and solid reasons.
But the League says that if only there were
more facilities and skilled workers who could
give patient attention to each individual case,
then a good many children now considered
unadoptable could be offered for adoption.
It has received grants totaling $15,500 to
study answers to this problem.
There are definite advantages for parents
When the day arrives that more of these
older chldren do become available for adopt-
tion, there will still be the problem of find-
ing couples ready to have them. In fact, that
problem will be wrse.
For even today there are all too few hus-
bands and wives willing to accept an older
child into their home. Yet there are many
advantages to such an adoption.
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STEP-BY-STEP hero is the procedure that one couple went through to
adopt a young boy. First they are interviewed by a social worker from
the orphanage or other agency. The couple must meet certain standards
of age, health, character, financial security, and emotional maturity.
Some of the more obvious advantages are
these: no diapers, no two o’clock feeding,
no rashes, colic, or flash fevers.
In addition, the older child already has a
personality of his own. He can “help” you
as you go about your work and join you at
recreation. What’s more, the older child
doesn’t merely absorb food and care day
after day without a glimmer of appreciation,
the way an infant does.
Give the older child a cookie or a ball, and
immediately his face flashes a “thank you”
more eloquent than words. Such recognition
can be one of the great satisfactions of
adopting an older child. —
The older child is able to put its innermost
fears and desires into words, too. Asked what *
sort of home she would prefer, four-year-
old Evelyn replied: “A rich one, so I can
have a doll carriage and five cents a day for
ice cream.”
On the way to the home of his potential
adoptive parents, six-year-old Michael
looked up at his mother-to-be and gravely
inquired: “Do you hit little boys?” Answered
in the negative, the boy then motioned
toward his prospective father and asked,
“Does he?” •
As for the “right” parents for an older
child, one adoption agency says they must
be “adequate—plus.” To do a good job with
any child, they must be loving, patient, and
understanding; they must be willing to “help
the child develop at his own pace and in his
own way.” But with an older child they may
also have to overcome certain resentments
and fears, as well as repairing emotional
damage which may already have been done
to the budding personality.
Some older children are troubled by dark
feelings of guilt. They think that being moved
from one home or institution to another
means they’ve been rejected fo being “bad.”
That’s why adoption agencies keep the
initial meetings between an older child and
his prospective parents as casual as possible.
If the youngster lears immediately that he’s
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Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 52, No. 5, Ed. 1 Sunday, August 8, 1954, newspaper, August 8, 1954; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1430861/m1/36/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Denton Public Library.