Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850-1929

225 Pages·2003·0.68 MB·English

by  Claudia Nelson

Little Strangers

Little
Strangers
Portrayals of
Adoption
and
Foster Care
in America,
1850–1929
Claudia Nelson
Publication of this book is made possible in part with the assistance of a Challenge Grant
from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency that supports
research, education, and public programming in the humanities.
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
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© 2003 by Claudia Nelson
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on
Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nelson, Claudia.
Little strangers : portrayals of adoption and foster care in
America, 1850–1929 / Claudia Nelson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-34224-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Adoption—United States—History. 2. Orphans—United
States—History. 3. Adoption in literature. I. Title.
HV875.55 .N449 2003
362.73’4’0973—dc21
2002014747
1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04 03
To my daughter Mary Isabel Nelson
(née Yi RuiFeng)
with love

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The 1850s and Their Echoes: Two Case Studies 9
2. Money Talks: The Displaced Child, 1860–1885 33
3. Melodrama and the Displaced Child, 1886–1906 66
4. Metaphor and the Displaced Child, 1886–1906 92
5. Adoption and Women, 1907–1918 115
6. Adoption Up to Date: The Rhetoric of Mass 147
Individuality, 1919–1929
Notes 179
Works Cited 193
Index 205

Acknowledgments
Like adoptions, books are group efforts. I appreciate the generous help of
family, friends, colleagues, and institutions. Martha Vicinus, Anthony
Rotundo, and Mimi Tangum provided invaluable support in this study’s
initial incarnation as a proposal laid before the National Endowment for
the Humanities; the NEH and Southwest Texas State University provided
financial assistance for which I am deeply grateful. Anne Morey, David and
Mary Nelson, Marilynn Olson, and the anonymous readers for Indiana
University Press pored over my work in manuscript form and offered per-
ceptive, constructive, and sometimes bracing comments. The book is richer
for their suggestions. Versions of chapters of this book originally appeared
as “Drying the Orphan’s Tear: Changing Representations of the Dependent
Child in America, 1870–1930" in Children’s Literature 29 (2001) and as
“Nontraditional Adoption in Progressive-Era Orphan Narratives” in Mosaic,
a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature 34, no. 2 (June 2001): 181–
197; another chapter contains material from my article “‘In these days of
scientific charity’: Orphanages and Social Engineering in Dear Enemy,” pub-
lished in Roderick McGillis’s collection Children’s Literature and the Fin de
Siècle (Greenwood Press, 2002). I thank Yale University Press, Mosaic, and
Greenwood for permission to reprint that material here. And finally, my
inspiration was provided by my daughter, who also spent much of her
toddlerhood asking solicitously, “Are you going to work on your book
about adoption now?” This book is for her, but also for Joseph, Marie,
Elena and Robert, Sarah and Becca, Alice and Margaret, and Maia and
Zoe—and for many others unknown to me.