Home Children

I had not heard the term Home Children, though it is not surprising as it relates to Canada. We have been watching the Acorn series – Murdoch Mysteries – though last night’s episode titled “Child’s Play” did not play properly for us – freezing and skipping – so we never got to the conclusion. After our local library “cleans” the disk, maybe we can check it out again and be able to see the full story.

The story was about a ragamuffin group of boys that were called Home Children. These were children rounded up from the streets of London and shipped off to Canada – there was also an adoption theme in the story. So, I went looking to learn more about these children. More than 100,000 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The program was largely discontinued in the 1930s but not entirely terminated until the 1970s. Research in the 1980s, exposed the abuse and hardships endured by the relocated children.

The practice of sending poor or orphaned children to English and later British colonies, to help alleviate the shortage of labor, began in 1618, with the rounding-up and transportation of one hundred English vagrant children to the Virginia Colony. In the 18th century, labor shortages in the overseas colonies also encouraged the transportation of children for work in the Americas, and large numbers of children were forced to migrate, most of them from Scotland. This practice continued until it was exposed in 1757, following a civil action against Aberdeen merchants and magistrates for their involvement in the trade.

The Children’s Friend Society was founded in London in 1830 as “The Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy through the reformation and emigration of children.” In August 1833, 230 children were shipped to Toronto and New Brunswick in Canada. In the first year of the operation, 500 children, trained in the London homes, were shipped to Canada. This was the beginning of a massive operation which sought to find homes and careers for 14,000 of Britain’s needy children. As they were compulsorily shipped out of Britain, many of the children were deceived into believing their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them. Some were exploited as cheap agricultural labor, or denied proper shelter and education. It was common for Home Children to run away, sometimes finding a caring family or better working conditions.

Many of these themes were part of the story we attempted to watch last night. It certainly piqued my interest in exploring it this morning. Much of today’s blog is courtesy of the Wikipedia page – LINK>Home Children.

An 18th-Century Hoax

Things have been a bit heavy lately. Not heavier than usual as regards all things adoption but even so, I’m going for a bit of light-hearted-ness today – or is it, really ? My soul and psyche need it but this one may not soothe, as it is one those historical oddities. Never-the-less . . . here goes.

Courtesy of The Guardian story by Melissa Harrison. It is a review of LINK>Mary and the Rabbit Dream. In 1726, the medical establishment believed that a poor woman had given birth to rabbits. That woman was Mary Toft of Godalming, who was a seasonal field laborer. paid only a penny a day. Her husband Joshua was a cloth worker. They were impoverished almost to the point of destitution. It wasn’t all that rare in a time of gross economic inequality. She was illiterate and healthy but her doctors described her as having “a stupid and sullen temper”.

The first “rabbit birth” occurred not long after Mary had suffered a miscarriage. Her mother-in-law, Ann Toft, was her midwife. A doctor from Guildford, John Howard, was enlisted for her case. She was moved into John Howard’s house but he lost control of the situation, as the sideshow snowballed with more and more rabbit parts issuing from Mary. So, she was taken to London, where she attracted the interest of the press and the king, was examined by rival surgeons and, eventually, the eminent obstetrician Sir Richard Manningham.

There was a myth at the time that that anything a woman saw or even imagined while pregnant could impress itself upon the developing fetus. What was known as maternal impression. Indignity and suffering were visited upon this powerless woman by people in thrall either to their own egos or their own schemes. In this historical hoax story, there was a lack of any clear, central motive presented to explain Mary’s supposed condition (though hunger could have driven her to the fabrications). At the time, rabbit farming was popular on Godalming’s sandy soils, but only for the rich. To poach a rabbit was to risk severe punishment – even in the face of starvation.

The “rabbit births” could have been an act of desperation on Mary’s part. Like many stories lost in the mists of time, all of the facts will never be known. So okay, maybe not a fun story for today. More so, a sad tale – as too oft is the truth.

Phantom Parents

An adoptee found a clipping from 1985 about “Talking to children about their unpleasant past.” What jumped out at more than one person who saw this was the part about “phantom parents.” The quote from the clipping read like this – “birthparents mean something symbolically to children. At some level the child is attached to these phantom parents. An attack on the parent is an attack on them.” Someone noted – It’s written as though this is a fact but also a mystery.

When I went looking for an image, I actually found where an adoptee, David Enker, had written a memoir titled LINK>”Phantom Parents” released as a paperback in May 2023. It is actually a collection of short stories and illustrations. He is a writer and designer living in Haarlem, which is a city in the Netherlands, with his wife and son.

David was unofficially adopted as a baby, so he decided to use that experience to explore the world from a unique perspective. He lived and worked in London as a freelance designer, taking him to many places and companies across the city, using the experience to write short stories and create photographs and graphic novels with deep personal and contemplative, often humorous, components.

Since there wasn’t much there, I kept looking and found a piece on Medium – LINK>Phantom Parent Syndrome. It is not related to adoption but the definition was helpful – There is a phenomenon known as phantom limb syndrome. This is when someone who has lost a limb still feels its existence through pain in that area or other sensations. There is a tug of presence, pain of loss, and irreversible change of life and connection to others.

So, interpreting this concept related to adoption, yes, I can believe that adopted children feel the existence of the parents who are not raising them. In that context, it makes sense.

Psychology Today has a piece on LINK>Phantom Families. Elinor B Rosenberg feels that while adoption meets real needs of kids, birth parents, and adoptive parents, she feels that it also denies deeply held wishes. Their longings often go underground, driving behavior and feelings in hidden ways. Adoptive parents wish they could have borne the kids they are raising; adopted kids wish the parents who bore them and raised them were the same; and birth parents wish the circumstances might have been such that they could raise the child they bore. Rosenberg has found that adopted children have greater identity struggles and that they launch later than their peers. Adoptees build a more grandiose “birth-parent romance” based on shards of information given to them by adoptive parents. They use the fantasy to explain to themselves why they were adopted, who their biological parents were, what kind of children they are now, and what kind of adults they will be.

Rosenberg says “It’s a narcissistic blow to be given away. They must come to terms with it.” It is honest to note that Rosenberg is also the mother of two adopted daughters (so there is that) as well as a clinician.

Glad I Was

I almost didn’t know what to write today. It seemed as though I had said it all in the last few days. But then an exchange with my mom, not long before she died, came back into my mind. She gave me editing privileges on her Ancestry account. She had done the family tree thing but it was all based on the ancestral lines of her adoptive parents and my dad’s adoptive parents. She admitted to me she just had to quit working on it. It wasn’t real, she knew that deeply, not in the sense Ancestry is meant to record. But quickly, she added, “you know, because I was adopted. Glad I was.”

What else could she say ? She didn’t know anything but her adopted life. Scarcely knew anything beyond her parents names of Mr and Mrs J C Moore – that doesn’t tell a person very much, though it proved to be accurate. She knew her name at birth was given to her by her mother as Frances Irene. Oh, she tried. Tennessee would not give her her adoption file even though she carried a deep certainly all the way to her death that she had been “inappropriately” adopted. Such a careful way she worded that. She knew Georgia Tann was involved and she knew about the scandal. She actually learned about it when it came out in the newspapers in the 1950s while she was yet a school girl.

She was devastated to learn from the state of Tennessee that her birth mother had died. Closing the door to her ever being able to communicate with that woman who gave her the gift of life through her own body.

It is that “Glad I was.” that haunts me today. I didn’t know about adoptee fog until recently. In fact, when I first entered my all things adoption Facebook group, wow, was I ever in it !! Adoption seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me. It was so natural that both of my sisters ended up giving up children to adoption.

What I want to say clearly this morning is – Adoption is the most UN-natural way for a child to grow up. Having one’s birth certificate altered to make it appear that total strangers actually gave birth to you when they did NOT. Having your name changed to suit the desires of your adoptive parents ? It is a fantasy. A pretend life and adoptees feel it keenly, as my mom clearly did “it just wasn’t real to me”.

The thing my mom could be glad for is that she had a financially comfortable upbringing and some perks such as travel along with her adoptive mother. She also suffered some coldness and harsh judgement because her natural body structure would never be lithe and thin as my adoptive grandmother took such pains to make her own. I know, I suffered a humiliating embarrassment in a public restaurant in London from her over the sin of taking a piece of bread and putting some butter on it.

My maternal adoptive grandmother was an accomplished and phenomenal woman. I grant her that. But I am convinced she bought her children when she found she could not conceive. I am no longer a believer in adoption and until I run out of things to write about – I will continue making an argument for family preservation and an end to separating babies from their natural mothers. I will defend allowing such children who are unfortunate enough to be adopted to keep ALL the ties to their identities – their genuine birth certificate and their name (unless and until, it is their choice to change that).