Your article touched on several items surrounding unwed mothers and babies born out of wedlock. I would have to say that because of abortion there are far fewer babies born in America today. In fact as I was corresponding with the Methodist Unwed mothers home and the Methodist Children's home earlier this century I learned that the Methodist Unwed mother's home in Texas closed it's doors sometime around the turn of the century because fewer unwed mothers were coming To them and they had no babies available for adoption. (Sorry any documentation I might have is lost in the bowels of our yahoo mail server or our home computer). Thus many families have looked to other countries for babies to adopt, which in and of itself has created a rather lucrative underground operation that few adoptive parents are aware of when applying to adopt a baby.
Additionally because many young unwed mothers here in America who do not have an abortion are encouraged to keep their babies rather than put them up for adoption at birth has led to other problems. One that I have seen has been an explosion of babies and toddlers that have been abused and forcibly placed in the foster care system. In fact there are so many children in foster care in our county that the child welfare department has had to farm children out to other counties. The biggest reason children are removed from homes is due to drug and alcohol use by the parents which leads to abuse and/ or neglect of the children and incarceration for the parents when they have broken the law. By the time the parents sign off their parental rights so the children can be adopted, these children have been bounced around to multiple foster homes and have suffered various degrees of trauma. This trauma that the child has suffered and been damaged by will take years to overcome and often is more than most adoptive parents care to deal with on a daily basis. Had the baby been given up for adoption at birth almost none of those problems would exist.
There is more I can say, but time and space does not allow me to do so at this time.
Thanks for the insight and info. I think the take away is that, although attitudes may have changed around children born outside of marriage, the realities of their lives maybe haven't changed as much as we might think or want, at least for a large group of them. Thanks for sharing!
This post was fascinating. Some of the conditions must have been horrific. I've done quite a bit of transcription of old records and while 'illegitimate' was a common word, another was 'spurious.' Such terms they used. Good examples of the attitude many had towards those children.
Thanks, it was a really interesting topic to dig around in. The post could have been ten times longer — just a lot of different aspects to explore. I might revisit it later in the serialization. Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the comment!
Your article touched on several items surrounding unwed mothers and babies born out of wedlock. I would have to say that because of abortion there are far fewer babies born in America today. In fact as I was corresponding with the Methodist Unwed mothers home and the Methodist Children's home earlier this century I learned that the Methodist Unwed mother's home in Texas closed it's doors sometime around the turn of the century because fewer unwed mothers were coming To them and they had no babies available for adoption. (Sorry any documentation I might have is lost in the bowels of our yahoo mail server or our home computer). Thus many families have looked to other countries for babies to adopt, which in and of itself has created a rather lucrative underground operation that few adoptive parents are aware of when applying to adopt a baby.
Additionally because many young unwed mothers here in America who do not have an abortion are encouraged to keep their babies rather than put them up for adoption at birth has led to other problems. One that I have seen has been an explosion of babies and toddlers that have been abused and forcibly placed in the foster care system. In fact there are so many children in foster care in our county that the child welfare department has had to farm children out to other counties. The biggest reason children are removed from homes is due to drug and alcohol use by the parents which leads to abuse and/ or neglect of the children and incarceration for the parents when they have broken the law. By the time the parents sign off their parental rights so the children can be adopted, these children have been bounced around to multiple foster homes and have suffered various degrees of trauma. This trauma that the child has suffered and been damaged by will take years to overcome and often is more than most adoptive parents care to deal with on a daily basis. Had the baby been given up for adoption at birth almost none of those problems would exist.
There is more I can say, but time and space does not allow me to do so at this time.
Thanks for the insight and info. I think the take away is that, although attitudes may have changed around children born outside of marriage, the realities of their lives maybe haven't changed as much as we might think or want, at least for a large group of them. Thanks for sharing!
This post was fascinating. Some of the conditions must have been horrific. I've done quite a bit of transcription of old records and while 'illegitimate' was a common word, another was 'spurious.' Such terms they used. Good examples of the attitude many had towards those children.
Thanks, it was a really interesting topic to dig around in. The post could have been ten times longer — just a lot of different aspects to explore. I might revisit it later in the serialization. Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the comment!