Orphanages: the real story

When the word "orphanage" is used, Americans typically cringe, imagining that the children who grew up in one had the crudest and cruelest of childhoods. Harsh, unrelenting critics of orphanages continue to play on these popular images of orphanages, but few researchers have thought to ask former orphans for their assessments of their childhood experiences. And no one to date has sought to assess the long-term impact of orphanages on the lives and well-being of the children who grew up in them.

To correct this deficiency in the ongoing welfare-reform debate, the preliminary findings from a survey of the alumni from three orphanages - a jewish home in the Midwest, a Presbyterian home in the South, and a non-sectarian home in the Midwest - are reported. The people who were in the homes, all of whom are now 44 years of age and older, were asked to report what they have accomplished over their lives and to assess the value of their childhood experiences in their respective institutions.

Generally speaking, the alumni have surpassed, by wide margins, their counterparts in the general population on a variety of social and economic measures. The findings from this study stand in sharp contrast to the claims of many childcare experts and policy commentators regarding the impact of orphanages on the children.

Survey findings

The findings reported here were gathered from surveying the alumni of three homes that served mainly disadvantaged (as distinguished from severely troubled) children.(1) The non-sectarian home, which had a 100-acre campus in rural Ohio, operated from revenues received primarily from a single benefactor. The Presbyterian home, which had 1,500 acres of land in rural North Carolina, received most of its funding from foundations, individuals, and the Presbyterian church. The Jewish home, which once operated on a 20-acre urban campus in Ohio and then on a 28-acre campus in a smaller town, also received most of its funding from private, mainly religious-based, contributions. All three homes have since changed their mission to serve only severely troubled children.

A survey, extending over eight pages, was mailed in the spring of 1995 to the more than 1,200 alumni on the mailing lists of the homes' alumni associations (which includes the names of residents before and after the change in the mid 1940s). Only the surveys from people who were at the homes before their change in missions were included in the computation of the summary statistics provided below. A total of more than 600 questionnaires from the targeted alumni were returned, which suggests a response rate for the targeted group of more than 50 percent.

The average year of the respondents' arrival at their respective homes was 1933. The alumni were, on average, eight years old when they arrived at their homes, and they stayed for an average of eight years (with most staying until they graduated from high school). The respondents, who are all white, are fairly evenly divided between males (52 percent) and females (48 percent). The alumni's average age today is 69 (the youngest respondent is 44 and the oldest is 96).

If the claims of child-care professionals, many of whom assert that orphanages only damaged the children in their charge, are true, then we might expect the alumni of homes for children, as a group, to have done poorly (or, at least, not well) on a variety of social and economic measures. However, a preliminary examination of the responses from the alumni of these three homes reveals the exact opposite:

Education. The alumni, 44 years of age and older, surpassed the general white population, 40 years of age and older, at every rung of the educational ladder, except at the highschool level at which both groups had practically identical graduation rates, 81 percent and 80 percent, respectively. However, while fewer than 22 percent of white Americans 40 and older had college degrees in 1993, more than 24 percent of the orphans had such degrees, a difference of 9 percent. Less than 9 percent of white Americans 40 and older had advanced degrees. Nearly 12 percent of the orphans had advanced degrees, a difference of 33 percent.

Unemployment. The unemployment rate for the country's entire labor force was over 6 percent last year. The alumni who were not retired had an unemployment rate of 1 percent.

Household income. The orphans 44 to 54 years of age had a median income 16 percent higher than their counterparts in the general white population. The orphans 55 to 64 had a median income 32 percent higher than their counterparts, and the orphans 65 and older had a median household income 75 percent higher than their counterparts.

Poverty. In 1992 (the latest year of available data), the national poverty rate was close to 15 percent for Americans of all races and 12 percent for all white Americans. The national poverty rate for white Americans in age groups 45 and older was between 5 percent and 6 percent. The poverty rate of the respondents was no higher than 3 percent.

Public assistance. Less than 3 percent of the orphans have ever been on any form of public assistance (not counting Social Security). In 1992 alone, 19 percent of the general population received at least one form of public assistance (not counting Social Security).

Time in prison. A white American has a 1.6 percent chance of spending some time in a state prison during his or her life. Less than 1 percent of the alumni report ever spending any time in a jail, state prison, or federal prison (suggesting a lower rate of incarceration than the general population).

Emotional disorders. Between 20 percent and 28 percent of all Americans at any point in time suffer from some form of diagnosable psychiatric or addictive disorder. Only 13 percent of the orphans report ever suffering from a mental or emotional disorder sufficiently serious to have warranted, at any time in their lives, the help of a psychologist or psychiatrist, and less than one-fifth of those former orphans who reported such problems (2 percent of all respondents) felt their problems were related, in any way, to their experiences at their homes for children.

Voter participation. About 76 percent of Americans who were 45 years old and older voted in the 1992 election. Nearly 88 percent of the former orphans voted, an 11 percent higher turnout rate (with the split in their votes for president more or less mirroring the election results).

Attitude toward life. The following question has been posed in a variety of public-opinion polls to a large number of Americans practically every year since 1957: "Taking all things together, how would you say things are going these days?" In 1994, 29 percent of the respondents in the general population indicated they were "very happy"; 59 percent indicated they were "somewhat happy"; and 12 percent indicated they were "not too happy." The former orphans, on the other hand, indicate a far more positive attitude toward life: 58 percent were "very happy" (exactly twice the percentage for the general population); 37 percent were "somewhat happy"; and 5 percent were "not too happy" (less than half the percentage for the general population).

Preference for institutional care. The orphans appear to have an overwhelming preference for their way of growing up over the next best alternative. When asked if they preferred to grow up in their orphanages or foster care, just over 92 percent preferred their orphanages, less than 2 percent preferred foster care, and 6 percent reported not knowing enough to say one way or the other. When asked if they preferred to grow up in their orphanages or with the available members of their own families, 75 percent of the respondents chose their orphanages, whereas less than 16 percent chose their own families, with less than 10 percent not being able to say.

Cost of care. Although the orphans had advantages other children did not have (for example, some former orphans reported having access to recreational facilities and the fine arts), the former orphans were not reared in the lap of high-priced care. The cost of care (covering housing, recreation, supervision, and basic amenities) per child around 1950 for the alumni from the Presbyterian home was less than $3,000 per year - in 1995 dollars! (When the cost of education and administration are added, the per child cost reached no higher than $5,000 a year - again, in 1995 dollars.)

Research agenda

Clearly, this survey of former orphans has limitations, the most important of which is that the respondents were not drawn randomly from the national population of all former orphans. The alumni who had good experiences might be more likely to be on the alumni mailing lists and more likely to respond. Tracking down all former residents of any given home for children, and then surveying all or just a random sample of them, is simply not possible.

However, even after allowing for some upward bias, the results do seriously undermine some of the critics' most sweeping, if not reckless, negative assessments applied to all orphanages. The findings also strongly indicate that, while institutional care may not be desirable for all disadvantaged children, it was helpful for many. The study strongly suggests that at least some - if not many - orphanages in this country appear to have known how to break the cycles of poverty, neglect, and abuse for hordes of children, and they did it, often with much gratitude from a majority of the alumni.

The evidence also suggests that partisans in the child-care debate would be well advised to revisit some strategically important questions, not the least of which are: What types of homes were successful? Did not homes for children have a higher ratio of successes to failures than the current foster-care system? To what extent can the attributes of the successful homes of yesterday be duplicated today?

(1) This study will eventually cover the alumni of a dozen homes.

COPYRIGHT 1996 The National Affairs, Inc.
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