Couples who wish to make special efforts should have complete physical examinations, both husband and wife, for though failure to conceive used to be attributed solely to the wife, we now know that in about thirty percent of cases it is the husband who is the cause. Many remediable physical conditions may be responsible for sterility, and the doctor, by correcting them, has a wonderful chance to contribute to human happiness. Many families feel the tragedy of not having children, and yet do not realize the need of finding out what the trouble is. They just drift along, assuming that nothing can be done, and often they could be made fertile. This subject is ably discussed in Human Sterility by Dr. Samuel R. Meaker of the Boston University School of Medicine.
When the doctor decides that there is practically no chance of a couple's having children of their own, their strong family urge may lead them to adopt some. They can find useful information in E. G. Gallagher's The Adopted Child. It often happens that people get as much satisfaction out of adopted children as they could have got out of their own, finding cause for pride, inspiration, and comfort in their unfolding toward maturity.
The question of whether we should adopt children when infants or later—at some age under six—is worth considering. It may seem at first glance that only infants raised from the cradle can really take the place of children of our own. While this is partly true, there are drawbacks to be considered. To begin with, the supply of infants for adoption is not by any means large enough to meet the demand. Second, more than half the number of small babies available are illegitimate, and one can often learn little about the parentage. Though various child-placing agencies find it difficult to allocate those children who do not become available for adoption till the age of three or four or later, there are many things to be said in favor of taking an older child. More often they are legitimate and more facts about their parentage can be ascertained; also, it is possible to apply intelligence tests which will disclose whether their intelligence is normal or above. Often those parents who want to adopt children tend to be intellectual, and will find greater happiness in—and give greater happiness to—a child who is of normal or superior intelligence.
You may object to the older child's early environment, thinking that it must have permanently injured even the fairest of capacities. But psychologists tell us that this is not really the case, and that the unhappy effects of poor environment during the first five years of a child's life can be removed, and the child reconditioned without too much trouble. Couples who are no longer young should, perhaps, adopt older children in order that they may stand in the most helpful age relation to them.
Children adopted as infants should always be told that they are not the flesh-and-bone children of the foster parents. This information, which is bound to come to them, will come with less shock from the parents themselves. At the age of five or six, when they first begin to be interested in where children come from, is a good time to tell them. It is agreed that the foster parents should use the word "chosen" rather than "adopted"—they chose their children out of all the thousands available, just as the foster father chose his wife, and the wife her husband.
This attitude toward the question makes for a feeling of family solidarity and loyalty no less profound than that between other parents and children. Everything must be done to prevent feelings of inferiority from growing out of the adoptive relationship: the children must never be reminded of the fact of adoption, the parents must not expect more gratitude from them than they would from offspring of their own, and they must never, never shout thanks to God, in a moment of anger, that the children are not really theirs. To do so is not to play the game. After all, under most state laws, children may be adopted on trial for a year. If the children are kept after that date, the parents bind themselves in law and in morality to bring them up exactly as if they were their own. I keep using the plural throughout this paragraph because I assume, of course, that you will adopt at least two children if it becomes necessary for you to plan in this way your version of a splendid American family—strong, loving, and creative of an ever finer future.