Over the years, a large body of literature has
dedicated to the structure of the family in America. Before the sexual revolution of the late 1960s, the traditional family unit was a mother, father, and children.
However, as the divorce rate has risen to over fifty percent, so has the structure of the family evolved into a myriad of single-parent families and blended families. Things aren’t as simple as they were in the days of “Father Knows Best” and “Leave it to Beaver.”
There is a growing body of work describing the psychological and sociological adjustments of the adoptive family, the adoptee, and, to a lesser extent, birth parents who relinquished their child for adoption, either by choice or unavoidable circumstances.
Curiously, very little attention has been paid to orphans who were never adopted.
In the movie, “The Cider House Rules,” the main character, Homer, was adopted multiple times only to be taken back because he was too “quiet” for one partner or mistreated by another.
Thus, Homer grew up in the orphanage, never to be adopted again. Instead, he was trained by the doctor who ran the ‘home’ to be an ‘unofficial doctor’ who performed abortions or helped babies come into the world for adoption.
At one point in the movie, Homer was trying to provide comfort to another orphan named Curly. Curly couldn’t seem to understand why the prospective adoptive parents who came to ‘watch’ the children at the orphanage never chose him.
Homer explained to Curly that he was “too special to be adopted by anyone”. Only a very special family could have Curly. It is never made clear if Curly ever believed Homer’s attempt to ease the boy’s pain.
What about orphans who are not chosen for adoption? Where are you going? What do they do?
In the late 1960s, a sizeable number of orphans, upon reaching their teens, were asked to drop out of school and join the army. Younger children were easier to supervise than older children with raging hormones.
Some orphans dropped out of school and worked full time. Most were recruited and sent to Vietnam.
Perhaps an unknown number of orphans were able to fight hard enough to finish high school. Possibly, there was a smaller group that applied to universities. Perhaps an infinitesimal number even graduated from college and had successful jobs or careers.
The difficulty is the lack of documentation on how many children left the orphanages without being adopted and were able to lead productive lives. Did they manage to finish their formal education? Did they develop business acumen to become successful entrepreneurs? Were they prosperous in love, marriage, and child rearing?
Very little is known about these individuals and even less is understood about what life was like for them who may well have been from another universe.
Would most people who have parents, either by birth or by adoption, understand these individuals?
When asked, most cannot imagine life without a family. They have never thought about what it would feel like to be alone on Thanksgiving or Christmas, or worse, being alone on their birthday.
There needs to be more anecdotal research on young men and women leaving orphanages without the benefit of a family or parent to guide them on their path to adulthood. Did any succeed or most failed? Did they perpetuate the circle of life and create children only to abandon them and grow up in orphanages themselves?
Perhaps they continued their quest for ‘belonging’ by working through college and possibly graduate school. It is possible that some of them might have waited for the right marriage partner and found satisfaction in being a loving spouse for life, as well as a devoted mother or father determined to be all they could imagine, or whatever God wanted them to be. wanted from them. be be.
It could be enlightening for many to know what it would be like to be a citizen of another universe.
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