2. That confidential official inquiries shall be made from time to time, as to the child’s progress and happiness in the adopted home.
3. That the child shall take the adopter’s name, and shall have, as far as is possible, the position of a natural child.
This Report was presented in June, 1921. Yet nothing has been done. And what I wish to emphasize with all the power that I have, is the crime of this delay and the urgent need there is for immediate legislation. Children are waiting to be adopted; childless people are waiting to adopt. Surely it ought not to be difficult to frame a simple law that would safeguard the interests of both.
There is little wonder that hitherto adoption has not been popular in this country. One strong reason that has prevented the far-sighted from attempting it is that in England there is no legal method by which adoption can be carried out. And because of this there is, as I have said, too much danger connected with it, as well as not enough certainty of its continuance. For the law grants the foster-parent no recognised control over the child.
There is the ever present fear, increasing as the years pass and the child grows up, lest the natural parent shall come one day and claim the right to take the child away—an injustice specially likely to happen as the child becomes older and is able to earn money.
Then there is, on the other side, the possibility (often realised) of the adoption being a commercial transaction between the parent (most frequently an unmarried mother) and a foster-parent, by which the latter receives a sum of money and takes over an unwanted child, who most frequently dies. It is horrible to contemplate.
But indeed, always, there is the dangerous position of the adopted child, who has no settled position, no legal claim on the foster-parents, who may adopt a child in the most solemn manner and keep it all through the attractive years of childhood, then, when the less attractive years of adolescence begin, or when any change in circumstances makes the adopted child no longer wanted, they can calmly withdraw their protection and turn the child out of their home. Again, I say, it is horrible to contemplate. The destiny of the adopted child is controlled throughout the unprotected years of childhood and of youth by the whim and caprice, both of the natural parent and the adopted-parent.
And do not comfort yourself by believing that these are merely imaginary troubles. They occur every day as every one knows who has any knowledge of the practice and results of child adoption in this country. I personally know of many cases of injustice that have brought disaster and unhappiness to the child. Let me tell you one. A boy was adopted by a man, unmarried, a minister of God, who was a social worker and greatly attached to children. But later in his life the man married. Under pressure from his mother, accounted as a religious and good woman, the adoption was cancelled, the boy, wanted no longer, was sent to a home for homeless children. No one troubled about him. Or take another case where an illegitimately born child—a baby girl, was abandoned and afterwards reclaimed three times during the first five years of her life! Each time the mother took her away from a happy home with foster-parents who loved and cared well for her. Then after a few months of neglect the mother again abandoned her. They had no legal remedy against the caprice of the mother.
These unguarded children belong to nobody. Here is an amazing gap in our law. It is worse than that—it is an amazing gap in our consciousness and sense of social responsibility. “Nobody’s children!” the phrase has a pitiable and stinging significance. Yet it is just this state of things we are countenancing with our lazy and callous indifference. There are tens of thousands of little ones for whom to-day it is bitter truth that they belong to no one. Orphaned, or unwanted by their natural-parents, many of them are being adopted in the worst and most casual manner—handed out “on probation” like a cat or a dog.