A View Back to 1962: Everything Old is New Again

Changing Concepts in Adoption in Services to Unmarried Mothers

By Florence G. Brown

Jewish Communal Service Association of North America, National Conference of Jewish Communal Service, Winter 1962 

The author argues that one reason Jewish family agencies have difficulties finding Jewish children for adoption by Jewish parents is that Jewish agencies are not reaching unwed mothers in their communities. She discusses rising rates of childbirth out of wedlock, and reviews the services offered by her agency, Louise Wise Services of New York City. These include increasing services to the unwed mothers themselves, increased service to the adoptive children after placement, and increased services to the adoptive parents after placement, instead of focusing exclusively on the adoptive placement itself. Efforts better to serve children with disabilities are also being made, along with new efforts necessary to place children of interracial backgrounds. 

Instead of applauding a decrease in women seeking out-of-family placements for their children as a sign of health for individuals and the nation...instead they bemoan the downturn in the baby market, the reduction of the lucrative redistribution of children. 

The concern is not for waiting children in orphanages or languishing in foster care, it's about how to cope with "difficulties finding Jewish children for adoption by Jewish parents." DIFFICULTIES FINDING CHILDREN to fill orders!!! This is a problem because "Jewish agencies are not reaching unwed mothers in their communities." !!!

The answer is RECRUITMENT, though they try to cleverly hide it in newspeak: "increasing services to the unwed mothers"

It is amoral. Children are clearly commodities to fill a demand and keep those in the industry making a living from it all...There is absolutely no other explanation for recruitment programs that this article is addressing as a s"solution" to the "problem" of a paucity of "available" babies to fill orders...especially within a niche market!

This is the kind of behavior that Australia apologized for but still continues in the US to this day!!!

The only slight change today in MARKETING techniques would be to delete the word "unwed" and to dangle open adoption as the best of both world's carrot. Otherwise, the gist of the article could be printed today...and likely IS!