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Aggression across the Lifespan
Confucian Views of Childhood
Memory and Childhood
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Introduction

Bereft of parents, the orphan is a child who requires protection, care, and guidance. The orphan thus reveals his or her culture’s understanding of both the underage child’s essential needs and society’s responsibility for meeting them. Because debates about the importance of the child often crystallize around the orphan, the orphan proves to be a figure of concern across cultures, throughout history, and in the contemporary world. The orphan is defined by the deprivation of parents, and is commonly understood to be a child who has lost both parents to death. However, historians and organizations such as UNICEF include the child who has lost one parent, often termed a “half” or “single” orphan, in the definition of “orphan.” The category of “orphan” can thus encompass numerous types of parentless children, ranging from children who have lost both parents to children who have living parents but live separate from them, such as the foundling (typically an abandoned child found and cared for by non-kin or an institution), the ward (typically an orphan cared for by a legal guardian), the pauper apprentice (typically an orphaned or abandoned child consigned to labor and cared for by an apprentice-master), and the street child (typically a child who has left his or her family to live and work on the streets). The research defining each of these types of orphans, among others, is detailed in separate categories in this article. The questions asked of the orphan are often defined by the time period and geographical area under investigation, and this bibliography is organized to address historical and contemporary orphaning by region. Past orphaning is the focus of historical and literary studies emphasizing Europe, Great Britain, and America, while contemporary orphaning in Africa and Asia is often approached from a sociological or psychological perspective or is the focus of governmental and agency studies. Many studies of the orphan emphasize orphaning’s causal factors. Historically, orphaning resulted from high mortality rates, and it remains common in areas ravaged by war or disease. Child abandonment’s contribution to past and present orphaning has also been an area of extensive research. Alternatively, many studies examine the solutions proposed for orphaning, investigating institutions such as the orphanage. The solution of adoption is explored briefly in this biography, as the subject has its own article within Oxford Bibliographies Online, titled Adoption and Fostering. In addition to being a figure of social concern, the orphan is a figure of imaginative possibility, serving as a character in numerous fictional plots. The focus of extensive literary study, the fictional orphan offers insight into changing cultural understandings of the child. The study of the orphan must take into account the different types of orphans, the historical shape of orphaning, national and regional differences in orphaning, responses to orphaning, and literary fascination with the orphan.

General Overviews

No comprehensive cross-cultural, transhistorical general overview of the orphan exists. Orphaning will sometimes appear as a subtopic in general overviews of the history of childhood. For example, Cunningham 2005 and Heywood 2001, two wide-ranging histories of childhood, mention orphans, foundlings, and pauper apprentices, while King 2007, a review of research in childhood studies, covers child abandonment and foundling homes. Focusing on America, Ashby 1997 offers an insightful examination of the orphan, tracing the historical changes in the cultural position of the dependent child. Askeland 2005 provides the most comprehensive overview of orphaning in America, collecting primary and secondary source materials that cover both the historical and contemporary situation of the orphan. The orphan is often discussed as a unique aspect of a more general children’s issue, such as adoption or family structure. When a study focuses on the orphan, it will typically provide a detailed examination of the orphan within a specific historical period, geographical area, or institutional setting; those studies appear in the other sections of this bibliography.

Ashby, LeRoy. Endangered Children: Dependency, Neglect, and Abuse in American History. New York: Twayne, 1997.
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Taking dependent children as its topic, this book provides a good introduction to the social position of the orphan in America. Chapters explain the colonial apprenticeship of orphans, the 19th-century use of orphanages, the “placing out” structures of orphan trains and fostering, and the 20th-century interest in child welfare.
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Askeland, Lori. Children and Youth in Adoption, Orphanages, and Foster Care: A Historical Handbook and Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005.
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This informative collection of primary sources, critical essays, and bibliographies examines orphaned, fostered, and adopted children. Focusing on the United States, the materials trace changes in the care of orphans, from Native American forms of adoption to colonial practices of apprenticeship, the 19th-century reliance on orphanages, and the 20th-century use of foster care. The book has sections devoted to orphanages, orphan trains, and orphans in literature.
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Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1550. 2d ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.
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An accessible overview of Western culture’s changing ideas about childhood. Cunningham addresses the orphan in sections that detail the institutional care of orphaned and abandoned children. Within his larger argument that children were valued and loved, he discusses the widespread philanthropic and governmental interest in “saving” the child.
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Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times. Cambridge, UK, and Malden, MA: Polity, 2001.
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Offering a comprehensive history of childhood from the Middle Ages to the present, Heywood’s study discusses the plight of orphaned or parentless children. The chapter “Caring for Infants?” examines abandoned children and the institutional solution of the foundling hospital, while the chapter “Children at Work” discusses pauper apprentices.
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King, Margaret L. “Concepts of Childhood: What We Know and Where We Might Go.” Renaissance Quarterly 60.2 (2007).
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This article provides a concise overview of the major debates defining research on the history of childhood. Orphanages and foundling hospitals are mentioned, as is child abandonment, poverty, and the care of children outside of the family. A comprehensive bibliography points to sources for further research on these topics.
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Anthologies

Essay collections offer strong overviews of the subject of orphaning, bringing together researchers who provide a variety of perspectives on the topic. Essay collections also provide one of the best sources of cross-cultural investigations of orphaning. Tedebrand 1996, Derosas and Oris 2002, and Panter-Brick and Smith 2000 anthologize articles on orphaning in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, allowing for a transhistorical and transnational approach to the topic. MacKenzie 2009 examines one solution to orphaning—the orphanage—by collecting essays by well-known researchers in the field; the result is an in-depth study of the topic.

Derosas, Renzo, and Michel Oris, eds. When Dad Died: Individuals and Families Coping with Distress in Past Societies. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
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This collection of essays explores the disruption of the family caused by the death of the father, studying widows and orphans in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Russia, China, and Japan. Essays report extensive demographic data relating to the age, gender, mortality, and kinship networks of orphans.
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MacKenzie, Richard B., ed. Home Away from Home: The Forgotten History of Orphanages. New York: Encounter, 2009.
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This collection brings together essays by several well-known historians of orphanage structures, including Anne McCants, Kenneth Cmiel, Marilyn Holt, and Timothy Hasci. As a result, it provides a good overview of the history of institutional care for children. The collection argues that orphanages provide a positive model for care for orphaned, abandoned, and unwanted children.
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Panter-Brick, Catherine, and Malcolm T. Smith, eds. Abandoned Children. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge, 2000.
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Combining history and social anthropology, this collection offers a cross-cultural examination of abandoned children. Focusing on the lived experiences of parentless, homeless, and stateless children, the collection opens with a useful definition of the different types of abandoned children, followed by essays on foundlings, street children, and refugees in Europe and Asia.
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Tedebrand, Lars-Goran, ed. Orphans and Foster-Children: A Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective. Revised papers from a session at the Social Science History Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, November 1992. Umea, Sweden: Umea University, 1996.
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One of the first sources devoted to the cross-cultural study of orphans, this slim volume contains four essays that examine 19th-century orphaning. The essays address kinship fostering in Iceland, a Christian orphanage in Japan, the orphanage and foster-homes in Stockholm, Sweden, and orphan morality and survival rates in Sweden.
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Reference Works

Reference works providing information on orphans include encyclopedias that contain entries on types of orphans, causes of orphaning, and solutions to orphaning. Fass 2003 and Stolley and Bullough 2006 include entries on “orphans,” “orphanages,” and “orphan trains,” among other topics. These entries define key terms, offer historical overviews, and list research resources, providing a good starting point for further research. McCaslin, et al. 2010 is a more popular reference on orphaning, containing entries on famous individuals who experienced the loss of parents but achieved success. Fass and Mason 2000 is an extremely helpful reference work, collecting primary source documents that capture the history of children, including orphans. The Children and Youth in History website contains primary source materials, reviews, and case studies relating to orphans, providing an exciting model of how web-based technology can encourage new directions in childhood studies research.

Children and Youth in History.
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Aimed at teachers, this website offers excellent resources for researchers as well. Sponsored by George Mason University and the University of Missouri–Kansas, the website features reviews of web-based materials, primary source collections, case studies, and teaching modules. Case studies include “Orphanage Records” and “Orphans and Colonialism” and feature primary sources.
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Fass, Paula S., ed. Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society. 3 vols. New York: Macmillan, 2003.
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Providing a comprehensive introduction to the many issues defining childhood studies, this three-volume encyclopedia addresses the topic of orphans, with entries on abandonment, orphanages, orphans, and orphan trains. Each entry includes a detailed essay and a bibliography.
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Fass, Paula S., and Mary Ann Mason, eds. Childhood in America. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
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This anthology collects primary source documents providing firsthand accounts of attitudes toward childhood. A section on “Children without Parents” includes selections on white servitude, the orphans’ courts, slavery, placing out, and adoption, and includes literary selections.
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McCaslin, Nikki, Richard Uhrlaub, and Marilyn Grotzky. Finding Our Place: 100 Memorable Adoptees, Fostered Persons, and Orphanage Alumni. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2010.
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This encyclopedia comprises reference articles on famous orphaned, fostered, or adopted persons. Although the entries are ordered alphabetically by name, they are also categorized by “childhood experience,” including being a foundling, orphanage alumni, orphaned, orphan train rider, and sold or indentured child. Well-known orphaned persons include Johann Sebastian Bach, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Orson Welles.
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Stolley, Kathy Shepherd, and Vern L. Bullough. The Praeger Handbook of Adoption. 2 vols. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006.
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Although this two-volume reference work focuses on adoption, it has several entries that relate to orphans, including essays on orphanages, the orphan trains, and the orphans’ courts. The appendix contains information on pre-orphanage institutions (such as the almshouse) and the demographics of orphanhood.
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Journals

Journals that publish articles on childhood reveal a range of academic approaches to the topic of the orphan. Journals that focus on the history of the family or the history of the child, including the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Journal of Family History, and The History of the Family, often publish specialized studies of orphaning in a specific time period and specific geographic area. Journals that focus on contemporary orphans take a more sociological approach, as seen in Childhood and Adoption Quarterly.

Adoption Quarterly. 1997–.
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Focusing on the topic of adoption, this scholarly peer-reviewed journal connects adoption to issues of child care, parenting, individual identity, and family structure. An interdisciplinary journal, it features theoretical and empirical research in the social sciences, humanities, and legal and social policy fields.
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Childhood. 1993–.
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This scholarly peer-reviewed journal addresses childhood from a social sciences perspective. Presenting research on the contemporary situation of children in a global society, articles have featured studies of AIDS orphans and contemporary orphanages.
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The History of the Family: An International Quarterly. 1996–.
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A scholarly peer-reviewed journal, The History of the Family emphasizes international approaches to the historical study of the family. Featuring comparative research and interdisciplinary studies, articles address Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas from historical, sociological, anthropological, and psychological perspectives.
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Journal of Family History. 1976–.
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Journal of Family History is a highly respected peer-reviewed journal that publishes historical research on the family. Often featuring articles on kinship relationships and household structures, it covers all time periods and geographical areas and includes studies of race, gender, and sexuality.
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Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth. 2002–.
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A scholarly peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth features research on the history of childhood and youth across time periods, cultures, and areas. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, it is the official journal of the Society of the History of Children and Youth and is one of the best sources for childhood studies research.
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History

The orphan is often positioned as a historical figure demanding historical reconstruction. As a result, historical studies provide the most comprehensive approach to the orphan. Orphaning is defined by parental deprivation, and, due to high mortality rates in the past, it was a common occurrence. “Orphan” proves to be an expansive term and can include not only children whose parents have died, but also children whose parents are living but have surrendered or abandoned them. Historical studies often categorize together all forms of children who lack parental care. This research, then, can be seen as capturing the historical understanding of the “orphan” as including many types of children defined by parent deprivation. Specific types of orphans who have living parents, such as Abandoned Children and Foundlings and Apprenticed and Indentured Orphans, are noted in separate sections of this bibliography, but they are typically included in studies that discuss “true” orphans. Orphaning is often framed as a “problem” that past societies needed to solve. Most historical studies of the orphan select a limited time period and geographical area for intensive research, seeking to develop a deep understanding of the specific experiences of orphans living at that time and place. Following broader trends in the development of childhood studies as a field of inquiry, historical investigations of orphans first focused on Europe and Great Britain, followed by North America, and only more recently have they addressed Asia, Russia, and Latin and South America. Well-known historians of childhood and the family have studied the orphan, including the British historians Peter Laslett and Ralph Houlbrooke (see Laslett 1977 and Houlbrooke 1984, cited under Great Britain), and the American historians Michael Grossberg and Steven Mintz (see Grossberg 1985 and Mintz 2004, cited under United States). Early historical studies of the orphan often focused on determining the demographic facts of orphaning, as seen in Laslett 1977, Holman 1975 (both cited under Great Britain), Robins 1968 (cited under Australia), and Viazzo 2001 (cited under Europe). Later studies examined the types of care provided for orphans, such as fostering, apprenticeship, and orphanages, as in Miller 2003 (cited under Europe), Abrams 1998 (cited under Great Britain), Ransel 1988 (cited under Russia), and Milanich 2004 (cited under Latin and South America). Most recently, studies have examined the cultural meaning of the orphan, as in Coates 2002 (cited under Europe), Nelson 2003 (cited under United States), Tadmor 2001 (cited under Great Britain), and Harrington 2009 (cited under Europe). Histories of the orphan are shaped by the available evidence; because historical studies must collect primary sources in order to generate statistical profiles and offer conceptual interpretations, many studies see orphans through the lens of the institutions that document their lives.

Asia and Southeast Asia

Historical studies of orphaning in Asia and Southeast Asia are rare. Recent studies of past Japanese orphaning have focused on the orphans left behind in China at the end of World War II and the controversies attending their repatriation to Japan, as seen in Chan 2011, Efird 2008, and Itoh 2010. Campbell and Lee 2002, a compelling study of Chinese households, provides an example of a demographic assessment of widows and orphans. Sen 2007 provides one of the few studies of historical orphaning in India. Taylor 1988, a nonacademic book, provides insight into the orphaning resulting from the Vietnam War.

Campbell, Cameron, and James Lee. “When Husbands and Parents Die: Widowhood and Orphanhood in Late Imperial Liaoning, 1789–1909.” In When Dad Died: Individuals and Families Coping with Family Stress in Past Societies. Edited by Renzo Derosas and Michel Oris, 301–322. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
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Providing a demographic study of Chinese households of over 12,000 wives and 11,400 boys, Campbell and Lee find that widows who have a son or live in a multiple-family household reduce their rate of mortality. They also find that boys who have lost a mother have a greater increase in mortality than boys who have lost a father.
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Chan, Yeeshan. Abandoned Japanese in Postwar Manchuria: The Lives of War Orphans and Wives in Two Countries. London: Routledge, 2011.
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Like Efird 2008 and Itoh 2010, Chan investigates the experiences of the Japanese wives and orphans living in China after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in World War II. Chan focuses on repatriation efforts after 1972, emphasizing East Asian ethnic transnationalism and social activism. She includes family accounts of two orphans, Morita and Nakajima.
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Efird, Robert. “Japan’s ‘War Orphans’: Identification and State Responsibility.” Journal of Japanese Studies 34.2 (2008): 363–388.
DOI: 10.1353/jjs.0.0035 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This article examines the more than 2,000 war orphans who remained as foster children in Chinese households after World War II, and have since attempted to return and integrate into Japanese society. It analyzes the failure of the Japanese government to repatriate, resettle, and compensate the war orphans.
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Itoh, Mayumi. Japanese War Orphans in Manchuria: Forgotten Victims of World War II. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
DOI: 10.1057/9780230106369 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This book focuses on the 3,000–5,000 Japanese orphans “left behind” in Manchuria, China after World War II. Interweaving a chronological history with narratives of individual orphans, the book explains the official nonrecognition of the orphans, the increasing pressure to locate the orphans, and the social, economic, and legal difficulties of repatriated orphans.
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Sen, Satadru. “The Orphaned Colony: Orphanage, Child and Authority in British India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 44.4 (2007): 463–488.
DOI: 10.1177/001946460704400403 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Sen emphasizes the racial aspects of orphanages in colonial India, finding that the institutions expressed an obsession with whiteness. In addition to protecting European orphans, the orphanages worked to educate children into correct social roles.
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Taylor, Rosemary. Orphans of War: Work with the Abandoned Children of Vietnam, 1967–1975. London: Collins, 1988.
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This personal narrative provides a detailed history of working in a nursery that saved orphans of the Vietnam War. Taylor recounts her work saving infants and organizing international adoptions.
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Australia

Historical studies of orphaning in Australia have focused on the colonial experience, emphasizing the emigration of parentless children from Great Britain. Kershaw and Sacks 2008 provides an accessible overview of these emigration programs, focusing on their founding and structuring. Robins 1968 provides a more focused and detailed study of the girls sent to Australia from Ireland. Ramsland 1986 studies the situation of the children committed to 19th-century orphanages in Australia. Snow 1991 furthers this research by emphasizing orphanage policies and philosophies. Murray 2008 brings these issues into the 20th century by studying Catholic orphanages. The best overviews of 20th-century orphaning in Australia are reports authored by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2001 and Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2004; these reports on emigration and institutional care provide detailed studies of the historical reasons for and the social and psychological effects of migration and institutionalization.

Kershaw, Roger, and Janet Sacks. New Lives for Old. Kew, UK: The National Archives, 2008.
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This book chronicles the emigration of orphans to Australia and Canada. Focusing on the British origins of the emigration movement, Kershaw and Sacks examine the Barnardo’s Homes, Dreadnought, Big Brother Movement, Christian Brothers, and Fairbridge Farm Schools schemes, all of which sent children to Australia in the 20th century.
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Murray, Suellen. “‘Where Are They? Who Are They?’ Reuniting with Family of Origin after Leaving Care.” Australian Historical Studies 39.2 (2008): 229–244.
DOI: 10.1080/10314610802033197 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Using oral histories, this study investigates the lives of children cared for by Catholic orphanages in mid-20th-century Australia. It examines why children entered the orphanage, if they had any contact with their family of origin, and if they tried to reunite with their family of origin after leaving care.
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Ramsland, John. Children of the Back Lanes: Destitute and Neglected Children in Colonial New South Wales. Kensington, Australia: University of New South Wales Press, 1986.
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This history focuses on neglected and abandoned children placed in orphanages in 19th-century Australia. Children were placed into lengthy apprenticeships to learn useful labor. The Male and Female Orphan Schools allowed the government to control emerging ideologies of child education and social welfare.
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Robins, Joseph A. “Irish Orphan Emigration to Australia, 1848–1850.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 57.228 (1968): 372–387.
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Robins provides a foundational history of 4,114 orphan girls who were sent from Irish workhouses to Australia. In addition to describing how the girls were selected, outfitted, and transported, he details their fates in Australia, which ranged from domestic service work, to marriage, to prostitution; and he details the growing criticism of the scheme.
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Senate Community Affairs References Committee. Lost Innocents: Righting the Record, Report on Child Migration. Canberra, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia, 2001.
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This governmental report reviews the history of child migration to Australia during the 20th century. It examines the numbers of migrants, the institutions that sent and received children, and the work performed by the children. It recommends the archiving of migrant records and funding of a “Child Migrant Support Fund.”
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Senate Community Affairs References Committee. Forgotten Australians: A Report of Australians Who Experienced Institutional or Out-of-Home Care as Children. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2004.
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This governmental report addresses the history of the more than 500,000 Australian children who were cared for in an institutional setting. The report traces the reasons for parental separation, forms of institutions, and the psychological legacy of institutionalization. The committee determined that a reparations fund should be established for victims of institutional abuse.
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Snow, Dianne. “Family Policy and Orphan Schools in Early Colonial Australia.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 22.2 (1991): 255–284.
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This article examines orphan schools for destitute children in colonial Australia. Snow connects the children’s institutionalization to broader governmental policies affecting the family, emphasizing the difficulty of the poorly paid convict population to provide for their families and the colonial authority’s desire to “protect” poor children from their “inappropriate” environment.
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Canada

Like Australia, Canada’s history of orphaning is often seen through the lens of emigration from Great Britain. The goals and structures of these emigration programs are fully documented by Bagnell 2001, Kershaw and Sacks 2008, and Parr 1994. Martin 2000 offers a more focused historical account of the Poor Law guardians who supported these programs. Rooke and Schnell 1983 provides a history of Canada’s institutional care of children, and Neff 2004 offers an excellent example of recent research in this area.

Bagnell, Kenneth. The Little Immigrants: The Orphans Who Came to Canada. Toronto: The Dundurn Group, 2001.
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This study examines the migration of over 80,000 British orphaned and abandoned children to Canada in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Providing a history of aid organizations, their philanthropic founders, and the children they served, it explains that children were brought to Canada to work on family farms.
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Kershaw, Roger, and Janet Sacks. New Lives for Old. Kew, UK: The National Archives, 2008.
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One solution to the large numbers of destitute children in Victorian London was to send them to Canada or Australia, as documented by this book. Kershaw and Sacks examine the leaders, goals, and procedures of Canadian migration schemes in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the most famous of which is the Bernardo’s Homes.
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Martin, Moira. “‘A Future Not of Riches but of Comfort’: The Emigration of Pauper Children from Bristol to Canada, 1870–1915.” Immigrants and Minorities 19.1 (2000): 25–52.
DOI: 10.1080/02619288.2000.9974982 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Tracing the emigration of orphaned and abandoned children from England to Canada, this article emphasizes the role of Poor Law guardians in organizing and funding child emigration and the role of women in supporting child emigration. Issues of class, gender, and imperialism are analyzed.
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Neff, Charlotte. “The Education of Destitute Homeless Children in Nineteenth-Century Ontario.” Journal of Family History 29.1 (2004): 3–46.
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This article provides a detailed historical study of orphanages in Ontario, comparing them to apprenticeship and familial forms of care. The research connects the orphanages to larger debates concerning the education of children and the development of a compulsory educational system.
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Parr, Joy. Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869–1924. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
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In this study of child emigration to Canada, Parr emphasizes the working life awaiting the orphans. Parr traces the larger patterns of poverty in England, Canadians’ distrust of immigrants, and orphans’ labor in often abusive apprenticeship situations. The study reports numerous case histories of individual children.
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Rooke, Patricia T., and R. L. Schnell. Discarding the Asylum: From Child Rescue to the Welfare State in English-Canada (1800–1950). Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983.
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Emphasizing the formation of 20th-century ideologies of child welfare, this book charts the rise and decline of institutionalized care for children. As this study shows, orphanages and asylums were formed to “save” destitute and neglected children.
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Great Britain

The study of orphaning in Great Britain has developed to cover many different time periods, locations, and forms of orphaning, and to employ many different methodologies in performing that research. As noted in the introduction to this History section, the historical understanding of the “orphan” often brings together several different types of parentless children. For example, children abandoned by living parents were often termed “orphans” and cared for by “orphan asylums.” As a result, the expansiveness of the term “orphan” characterizes research on Great Britain. Works on British population history, such as Laslett 1977 and Holman 1975, determine the crucial demographic facts of orphaning; they note, for example, that close to half of all children experienced orphaning in early modern England. Works such as Ben-Amos 1994 and Houlbrooke 1984 connect orphaning to larger patterns of family life, such as apprenticeship work or familial responses to death. More recent studies, such as Abrams 1998, Murdoch 2006, Nelson 2007, and Tadmor 2001, offer detailed studies of orphaning and use them to illuminate cultural attitudes towards children. Studies of British orphanages and the children cared for by these institutions are detailed in the section on Orphanages: Great Britain.

Abrams, Lynn. The Orphan Country: Children of Scotland’s Broken Homes from 1845 to the Present Day. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1998.
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Using what she calls a “child-centered perspective,” Abrams examines the different strategies employed in Scotland to care for parentless children, including orphanages and boarding or fostering out. The book is organized by “types” of children, including the orphanage child, emigrant child, and problem child.
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Ben-Amos, Ilana Krausman. Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
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This wide-ranging history of childhood in England provides several focused discussions of orphans. Ben-Amos finds that orphans were often cared for by relatives, while less desirable options included “boarding out” the orphan or entering the orphan into a formal apprenticeship. She calculates that over 40 percent of apprentices would have been orphans.
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Holman, J. R. “Orphans in Pre-industrial Towns: The Case of Bristol in the Late Seventeenth Century.” Local Population Studies 15 (Autumn 1975): 40–44.
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Offering a study that supplements the findings of Laslett 1977, Holman surveys rates of orphaning in Bristol. Working with parish tax records, he finds that at least 24 percent of the city’s children were “half” (or “single”) orphans with one parent dead. He concludes that orphaning was most likely underreported, due to large numbers of children not residing with their widowed parent.
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Houlbrooke, Ralph. The English Family, 1450–1700. New York and London: Longman, 1984.
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In this comprehensive history of the family, Houlbrooke examines orphaning in a chapter addressing the subject of death. He explains that, on the death of a parent, orphans were often taken in by kinsfolk or, if they had property, were addressed by the Court of Wards or London’s Court of Orphans.
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Laslett, Peter. Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511522659 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
A chapter in this study titled “Parental Deprivation in the Past: A Note on Orphans and Stepparenthood in English History” (pp. 160–173) contains one of the foundational demographic studies of orphaning. It concludes that approximately two-fifths to two-thirds of young women would have been fatherless at the time of marriage in 17th-century England.
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Murdoch, Lydia. Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
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Comparing literary images to the historical realities of the orphan, Murdoch argues that the 19th-century melodramatic idea of the “poor urban waif” helped to exclude the poor from citizenship. Murdoch shows that most children in orphanages had one living parent. She connects the orphan figure to evolving discourses of social welfare, citizenship, and child care.
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Nelson, Claudia. Family Ties in Victorian England. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007.
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Nelson analyzes the Victorian ideal of the sentimental family, along with the broad range of family experiences that complicate that ideal. In a chapter on “Stepfamilies and Foster Families,” Nelson explains that poor displaced children were entered into institutions such as orphanages, while middle-class children entered into fostering and adoption arrangements. She analyzes popular literary depictions of abusive parents, family secrets, and evil stepparents.
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Tadmor, Naomi. Friends and Family in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship, and Patronage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511496097 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Tadmor’s research emphasizes the flexible membership of the family household. Using historical materials such as diaries, she demonstrates that the household included nonbiologically related friends, servants, and boarded and fostered children. Using literary materials, she examines the concept of “friends” who served as guardians to orphaned children.
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Europe

As extensive research on orphaning has revealed, the parentless child has been a significant presence throughout European history. Following the groundbreaking works Fuchs 1984 and Boswell 1988, cited under Abandoned Children and Foundlings, historians have focused on the circulation of orphaned and abandoned children within premodern and early modern societies. As noted in the introduction to this History section, the historical understanding of the “orphan” often conflates several different types of parentless children, and the inclusive nature of the term “orphan” characterizes much of the research cited here. Boutry 1991 offers a comprehensive collection of essays that demonstrate the importance of understanding child abandonment in Europe while showing the wide variety of research definitions and approaches encouraged by the topic. Many historians examine the solutions created to care for these parentless children. Harrington 2009, Miller 2003, and Pullan 1989 examine orphanages, orphan homes, fostering, apprenticeships, and guardianship. Coates 2002 studies the extreme strategy of colonial exile. Because they leave a rich historical record, orphanages are often the focus of detailed institutional histories; these studies are listed under Orphanages. Feci 2010 and van Solinge, et al. 2000 offer excellent examples of the research methods and questions used to uncover the kinship and familial care of orphaned children. Viazzo 2001 and Bideau, et al. 2002 employ demographic methodologies to generate new profiles of European orphaning.

Bideau, Alain, Guy Brunet, and Fabrice Forono. “Orphans and Their Family Histories: A Study of the Valserine Valley (France) during the 19th and the 20th Centuries.” The History of the Family: An International Quarterly 5.3 (2002): 315–325.
DOI: 10.1016/S1081-602X(00)00045-2 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Employing new methodologies of historical demography, Bideau and colleagues found that, in this French community, 13 percent of children were orphaned before age thirteen. Reconstructing orphan’s lives and household, they show that orphaned children were typically taken in by a surviving parent or relative. The essay provides clear definitions of “becoming” and “being” an orphan.
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Boutry, Philippe, ed. Enfance abandonnée et société en Europe, XIVe–XXe siècle: Actes du colloque international organisé par la Società italiana di demografia storica . . . [etc.], Rome, 30 et 31 janvier 1987. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1991.
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This comprehensive collection of articles on child abandonment demonstrates that the phenomenon was widespread across Europe and characterizes both early modern and modern time periods. The book’s forty-six essays offer insight into the wide-ranging methods that can be employed to examine the parentless child.
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Coates, Timothy J. Convicts and Orphans: Forced and State-Sponsored Colonization in the Portuguese Empire, 1550–1755. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
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Coates examines how orphans were used to expand the Portuguese empire, and were then exiled in those colonies. Like criminals and gypsies, orphans were a marginalized group that could be used by the state as a tool in colonization. Issues of gender are raised in sections on orphan girls.
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Feci, Simona. “Orphaned Siblings and Noble Families in Baroque Rome.” European Review of History 17.5 (2010): 753–776.
DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2010.513127 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This article offers insight into possible new directions in the study of the orphan. Rather than focusing on institutional solutions to orphaning, it examines the adaptation of the family to orphaning and the impact orphaning had on childhood experience. The essay focuses on the impact a father’s death had on orphaned siblings’ relationships.
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Harrington, Joel F. The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
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Harrington examines the “circulation” of unwanted children through orphaning, abandonment, and fostering. The book is organized by a series of individual histories: the unmarried mother, absconding father, beleaguered magistrate, street orphan, and state ward. These figures are connected to larger patterns documented in legal records.
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Miller, Timothy. The Orphans of Byzantium: Child Welfare in the Christian Empire. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of American Press, 2003.
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Miller provides a clear history of the different ways that orphaned children were cared for in the classical world: legal guardianship by relatives, adoption into a family structure, care in an orphan school run by the Christian church, and care in a state-run orphanage. Miller offers a detailed study of the importance of the Orphanotropheion of Constantinople.
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Pullan, Brian. Orphans and Foundlings in Early Modern Europe. Berkshire, UK: University of Reading, 1989.
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In this short collection of three lectures on orphans, Pullan examines why Catholic Europe created large institutional structures for orphans, such as foundling hospitals, earlier than Protestant England. He points to European practices such as wet-nursing and England’s decentralized structures such as parish-based poor relief.
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van Solinge, Hanna, Evelien Walhout, and Frans van Poppel. “Determinants of Institutionalization of Orphans in a Nineteenth-Century Dutch Town.” Continuity and Change 15.1 (2000): 139–166.
DOI: 10.1017/S0268416099003392 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
While most studies of orphans focus on orphanage structures, this essay examines the family and community networks that determined the care given to an orphan. Providing a longitudinal study that traces individual orphans from orphaning through adulthood, the essay examines why some orphans were raised by kin and some entered orphanages.
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Viazzo, Pier Paolo. “Mortality, Fertility, and Family.” In Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789. Edited by David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, 157–190. History of the European Family 1. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
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Part of the well-respected Yale History of the European Family series, this essay provides demographic findings on early modern rates of orphaning and abandonment. Citing British and European studies, Viazzo concludes that “the number of orphans was very high,” with approximately 50 percent of children affected. Viazzo examines kinship fostering, apprenticeship, and orphanages.
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Latin and South America

In its approach to the figure of the orphan, Latin American studies often explores child circulation as a cultural strategy for caring for parentless children, emphasizing the variety of culturally accepted forms of care that might be used for one child or that might exist simultaneously in one area, including forms of fostering out, informal adoption, and orphanage care. Child circulation is also used to define contemporary practices in Latin America, as seen in Leinaweaver 2008, cited under Fostered and Adopted Orphans. Blum 1998 and Milanich 2004 have made influential arguments advocating a more fluid approach to the orphan and his/her overlapping systems of care; both researchers connect the orphanage to larger structures of kinship, charity, labor, and power. Additional studies show that the orphanage encourages a variety of research methods and findings. Meze 1991 uses orphanage records to generate demographic figures, while Windler 2011 explores cultural values. Meznar 1994 uncovers a different form of orphan care—guardianship—and connects it to labor practices.

Blum, Ann S. “Public Welfare and Child Circulation, Mexico City, 1877 to 1925.” Journal of Family History 23.3 (1998): 240–271.
DOI: 10.1177/036319909802300303 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This insightful study offers a detailed examination of the Mexico City’s “Casa de Niños Expositos” orphanage, showing how it enacted larger cultural understandings of family honor, class distinction, charity, patron-client relations, and ritual kinship. The orphanage enacted “child circulation” even as family law attempted to regulate that activity.
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Meze, René Salinas. “Orphans and Family Disintegration in Chile: The Mortality of Abandoned Children, 1750–1930.” Journal of Family History 16.3 (1991): 315–329.
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Examining orphanage use in Santiago, Chile, Meze charts high rates of child abandonment and illegitimacy. Child morality in the orphanage remained high until the 20th century, with 81 percent of children dying before their eighth birthday.
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Meznar, Joan. “Orphans and the Transition to Free Labor in Northeast Brazil: The Case of Campina Grande, 1850–1888.” Journal of Social History 27.3 (1994): 499–515.
DOI: 10.1353/jsh/27.3.499 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Meznar documents the demand for labor in 19th-century Campina Grande and the unique use of orphans to meet that demand: farmers became the legal guardians of poor orphan boys in order to secure their labor.
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Milanich, Nara. “‘The Casa de Huérfanos’ and Child Circulation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Chile.” Journal of Social History 38 (2004): 311–340.
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2004.0130 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Milanich’s important essay connects the orphanage to a larger network of structures that provide care for children outside of the natal home: fosterage, adoption, apprenticeship, and domestic labor. Milanich finds that child circulation (rather than abandonment) was a widespread and accepted practice. Similarly, orphanages functioned as clearinghouses rather than permanent homes.
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Windler, Erica. “Honor among Orphans: Girlhood, Virtue, and Nation and Rio de Janeiro’s Recolhimento.” Journal of Social History 44.4 (Summer 2011): 1195–1215.
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2011.0052 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Addressing issues of gender (which are often not fully considered in studies of orphaning), this article examines an orphanage for girls and its careful negotiation of the cultural values of honor, status, and virtue. It analyzes the orphanage’s provisions for the orphan girls’ education, work, marriage, and dowry.
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Middle East

Few researchers have examined orphaning in the Middle East. The two essays noted here reveal that the Middle East’s similarities to and differences from the Western understanding of orphaning can be emphasized. Eraqi-Klorman 2001 explores the “Orphan’s Decree” that allowed orphaning to be used as an anti-Semitic tool of the state. In contrast, Maksudyan 2009, a study of orphaning in the Ottoman Empire, uncovers patterns of child care that are similar to those found in western Europe.

Eraqi-Klorman, Bat-Zion. “The Forced Conversion of Jewish Orphans in Yemen.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33.1 (2001): 23–48.
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This article examines the “Orphan’s Decree,” which required that all underage Jewish orphans be converted to Islam. It finds that the decree was revived in the 1920s but inconsistently enforced in the 1930s and 1940s. In response, Jewish families would bring orphans to safe communities or across the border.
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Maksudyan, Nazan. “Modernization of Welfare or Further Deprivation? State Provisions for Foundlings in the Late Ottoman Empire.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2.3 (2009): 361–392.
DOI: 10.1353/hcy.0.0071 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Maksudyan locates patterns in Late Ottoman child abandonment and care, showing that care evolved from adoptive care to paid wet nurses to foundling asylum care. He argues that as care became more institutionalized and less personalized, the suffering of the children and morality rates increased.
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Russia

There are relatively few studies of historical orphaning in Russia, as most studies focus on the contemporary situation caused by abusive orphanages, as detailed in the Contemporary Orphaning: Russia and Eastern Europe section of this bibliography. Because historical orphaning in Russia is seen through the lens of later Communist practices, Russia is given its own section in this article, rather than included in the section on Europe. Ransel 1988, Smirnova 2010, and Zezina 2010 emphasize the fostering-out system as an alternative to the orphanage. Together, they provide a history of foster care in Russia, with Ransel 1988 focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries, Smirnova 2010 on the early 20th century, and Zezina 2010 on post–World War II fostering and orphanages.

Ransel, David L. Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
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Ransel uncovers the large-scale practice of fostering out children in 18th- and 19th-century Russia. He emphasizes the “traffic in children” encouraged by fostering, explaining that it built networks between town and village.
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Smirnova, Tat’iana M. “‘Beloved Children of the Soviet Republic’: The History of Foster Care in Soviet Union, 1918–1930 .” Russian Studies in History 48.4 (2010): 9–25.
DOI: 10.2753/RSH1061-1983480401 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Smirnova details the often overlooked history of family-based foster care for orphans in Russia. Reviewing the problem-plagued development of foster care in the early 20th century, she details fostering rates and arrangements and the attempt to organize and regulate the fostering system.
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Zezina, Mariia R. “Without a Family: Orphans of the Postwar Period.” Russian Studies in History 48.4 (2010): 59–73.
DOI: 10.2753/RSH1061-1983480404 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Focusing on the high rate of orphaning and homelessness in Russia after World War II, Zezina examines the solutions provided by foster care and children’s homes. She emphasizes the poor quality of the institutional homes, providing evidence of substandard care and abuse.
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United States

The study of American orphaning has been embedded in research tracing larger shifts in the cultural understanding of American childhood. Groundbreaking books on the family (Grossberg 1985), the child (Mason 1994), and childhood (Mintz 2004) have included sections on orphaning and the solutions provided by guardianship, apprenticeship, adoption, orphanages, and orphan trains. As these comprehensive histories show, the orphan has tested developing notions of the child’s place in the home and community. Ashby 1997 emphasizes the problematic aspects of orphaning, focusing on the neglected and abused child. Nelson 2003 provides a particularly rich exploration of how the orphan both reflected and encouraged changing definitions of the child. Studies focused more narrowly on orphaning include Fryer 2007 and Rutman and Rutman 1986; they provide excellent examples of the reconstruction of child/family/kin/community networks that care for the orphan. Perhaps the best-known study of the American orphan is Gordon 1999, considered a model of micro-history research. Analyzing a shocking 1904 incident involving the racially motivated abduction of orphans, Gordon’s book is a highly readable narrative that tackles difficult issues of race, class, and gender.

Ashby, LeRoy. Endangered Children: Dependency, Neglect, and Abuse in American History. New York: Twayne, 1997.
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As he documents the neglect of children in America, Ashby addresses orphans and the forms of care provided for them from colonial times to the present. Topics covered include apprenticeship, orphanages, orphan trains, and fostering.
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Fryer, Darcy. “‘Improved’ and ‘Very Promising Children’: Growing Up Rich in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina.” In Children in Colonial America. Edited by James Marten, 104–126. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
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This essay explores the extensive parenting networks that defined the lives of wealthy children in 18th-century South Carolina. These networks provided security when orphaning occurred, as kin and family friends were then available to serve as guardians.
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Gordon, Linda. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
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This fascinating study focuses on an “orphan train” incident in which white orphans were delivered to Mexican families, leading the town’s white leaders to forcibly claim the orphans. Gordon’s analysis focuses on the racial dynamics of the event, which also reveal socioeconomic, religious, and gender structures of the American West.
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Grossberg, Michael. Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
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Grossberg’s groundbreaking study explains the laws regulating the 19th-century family and its practices of marriage and parenting. Chapters on bastardy and the custody of children explore the child with uncertain parentage. As Grossberg explains, guardianship, apprenticeship, and adoption offered ways of securing parenthood.
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Mason, Mary Ann. From Father’s Property to Children’s Rights: The History of Child Custody in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
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Mason’s comprehensive study of the relationship between parents and children includes a discussion of parental death and the resulting orphaning. In the colonial era, orphans would be placed with guardians or in an apprenticeship. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, orphans were housed in asylums or placed out into families.
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Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
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In this important study of American childhood, Mintz discusses orphaning within larger historical shifts in construction of the meaning of the child. Chapter 8, “Save the Child,” focuses on growing concern for the dependent child and the development of orphan asylums and orphan trains. The book also discussions orphan apprenticeship and literary representations of orphans.
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Nelson, Claudia. Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850–1929. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
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Tracing a crucial shift in the understanding of the orphan, this book examines the evolution from the 19th century’s valuing of the fostered child as a source of labor to the 20th century’s interest in connecting the adopted orphan to ideals of the nurturing family. Nelson combines literary and historical study to generate original insights.
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Rutman, Darrett B., and Anita H. Rutman. A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650–1750. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.
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This historical community study finds that orphans were common (determining that 20 percent of children were orphans before age thirteen), and examines their integration into family structures. Working with county court records, the study emphasizes the structure of legal guardianship and connects it to community relationships.
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Contemporary Orphaning

Although it is often positioned as a problem of past societies, orphaning has emerged as a significant issue in countries experiencing high parental morality rates due to disease and war or high infant abandonment rates due to poverty. Like historical orphaning, contemporary orphaning is often approached by geographical area. While Western countries often define orphaning as a past phenomenon, Africa, Asia and Southeast Asia, and eastern Europe are experiencing orphaning as a current concern. Most importantly, the devastating spread of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa has created an orphan crisis (see AIDS Orphans section). A large body of research aims to define aspects of this rapidly evolving crisis and offer possible strategies of approaching or managing it. In addition, countries emerging from Communist rule, such as Russia and Romania, have experienced high rates of orphaning due to the institutionalization of children and are generating research on possible ways to resolve the problem. Finally, areas such as the Middle East and Asia have recently started to investigate orphaning as a contemporary issue. With reduced mortality rates in the West, orphaning in which a child loses both parents to death is relatively rare; however, children experience a form of orphaning when they are neglected or abused and removed from their parental care. As a result, contemporary orphaning in the United States and Europe is typically seen in terms of foster care and adoption, a large topic of research in its own right. Because there is a separate article on Adoption and Fostering within Oxford Bibliographies Online, it is only briefly indicated as a subject here (see citations under Fostered and Adopted Orphans below). Research on the contemporary orphan reminds us that orphaning may be a “constant” that connects past and present rather than an event confined to the past.

AIDS Orphans

The AIDS epidemic has transformed orphaning into a significant contemporary concern. Many studies of AIDS orphans focus on one country and are listed under that country’s contemporary concerns, while more general or cross-cultural studies of AIDS orphaning are listed here. The term “AIDS orphan” is used to discuss children whose parents have died due to AIDS. Sherr, et al. 2008 examines the different meanings of the term, noting that it can indicate the death of one parent or both parents. United Nations Children’s Fund, et al. 2004 provides an accessible overview of the problem and offers general guidelines for an effective response to orphaning. While the UNICEF report emphasizes family-based care of orphans, Whetten, et al. 2006 finds institutional care to be equally effective and calls for further research into the specific qualities that lead to improved child outcomes. Foster, et al. 2006 provides excellent examples of differing approaches to children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS, with essays examining community, educational, psychosocial, and human rights aspects of the problem in Africa, Asia, and the United States. Additional AIDS orphan research is listed by country.

Foster, Geoff, Carole Levin, and John Williamson, eds. A Generation at Risk: The Global Impact of HIV/AIDS on Orphans and Vulnerable Children. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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The essays in this collection offer suggested strategies for improving the situation of children orphaned by AIDS in Africa, Asia, and the United States. The authors detail plans to improve family, community, educational, and faith-based responses, strengthen economic and psychological supports, and expand research on AIDS orphans.
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Sherr, Lorraine, Rebecca Varrall, Joanne Mueller, et al. “A Systematic Review on the Meaning of the Concept ‘AIDS Orphan’: Confusion of Definitions and Implications for Care.” AIDS Care 20.5 (2008): 527–536.
DOI: 10.1080/09540120701867248 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Reviewing 360 studies that discuss AIDS orphans, this essay examines the term “AIDS orphan” and finds little consistency in its use. The essay calls for distinguishing among orphans who have lost one parent or both parents. It also calls for clarified definitions of related factors such as poverty, illness, and trauma.
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United Nations Children’s Fund, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and United States Agency for International Development. Children on the Brink 2004: A Joint Report of New Orphan Estimates and a Framework for Action. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund, 2004.
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This report, jointly produced by UNICEF, UNAIDS, and USAID, provides a crucial overview of contemporary orphaning, affecting 143,000,000 children worldwide. It assesses the total numbers of orphans in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and describes trends in orphaning. It recommends taking a developmental approach to orphan care and placing orphans in family-based care.
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Whetten, Kathryn, Ostermann, Jan, Rachel A. Whetten, et al. “A Comparison of the Wellbeing of Orphans and Abandoned Children Ages 6–12 in Institutional and Community-Based Care Settings in 5 Less Wealthy Nations.” PLoS One 4.12 (2006): e8169.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008169 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Stressing the enormity of the global orphaning problem, the researchers examined both institutional and family-based forms of care in five countries, testing children for emotional and cognitive functioning. They found that institutions are often culturally specific and that children in institutional settings did no worse than children in community settings.
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Africa

Most research on AIDS orphans focuses on Africa. United Nations Children’s Fund, and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS 2006 provides an excellent introduction to the AIDS orphan crisis, providing statistics on the number, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and family structures of the orphans. Guest 2003 provides a very accessible narrative approach to this crisis; in addition to defining the scope of the problem, Guest provides stories of orphans and their reliance on a variety of family structures and child welfare services. Singhal and Howard 2003 collects essays assessing the needs of orphans and the solutions offered to them. Ardington and Leibbrandt 2012 and Zagheni 2011 examine trends in recent research, including an interest in secondary problems resulting from AIDS orphaning and the continuing evolution of families’ adaptation to AIDS orphaning. Eriksson and Rupp 2002 introduces a different form of orphaning that occurs in Africa—that resulting from war.

Ardington, Cally, and Murray Leibbrandt. “Orphanhood and Schooling in South Africa: Trends in the Vulnerability of Orphans between 1993 and 2005.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 58.3 (2012): 507–536.
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This article provides statistical research that defines the secondary problems caused by AIDS orphaning. Most notably, orphans lose educational opportunities. The essay also provides comprehensive counts of “single” orphans (one parent lost), “double” orphans (both parents lost), and foster children.
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Eriksson, Cynthia B., and Elizabeth A. Rupp. “Bereavement in a War Zone: Liberia in the 1990s.” In Children and War: A Historical Anthology. Edited by James Marten, 87–98. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
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This essay examines the traumatic effects of the Liberian civil war on children, focusing on the experiences of a group of orphans living in an urban orphanage. It explores the orphans’ processing of the grief and trauma caused by parental death and separation.
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Guest, Emma. Children of AIDS: Africa’s Orphan Crisis. 2d ed. London: Pluto, 2003.
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To capture the lived realities of AIDS orphaning, Guest provides a series of stories of individual orphans and their experiences in extended families, foster families, “cluster fostering,” orphanages, child-headed households, and on the street. The book’s conclusion predicts a bleak future, but emphasizes destigmatizing the AIDS orphan.
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Singhal, Arvind, and W. Stephen Howard. The Children of Africa Confront AIDS. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2003.
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This collection of essays investigates the increasing numbers of orphans resulting from the AIDS crisis. Assessing the orphans’ social, familial, personal, economic, and political problems, the essays report on school- and community-based programs offering psychological intervention, medical care, and AIDS education.
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United Nations Children’s Fund, and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. Africa’s Orphaned and Vulnerable Generations: Children Affected by Aids. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund, 2006.
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This UNICEF report offers a compelling discussion of the scale of the AIDS orphan crisis, detailing the family structures of the orphans. The report emphasizes the impact of orphaning on the health, poverty, education, and psychological well-being of the children. The report recommends connecting orphan services to community and educational organizations.
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Zagheni, Emilio. “The Impact of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic on Kinship Resources for Orphans in Zimbabwe.” Population and Development Review 37.4 (2011): 761–783.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2011.00456.x Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
In Africa, AIDS orphans are taken in by their extended family; using new research techniques, this essay projects the breakdown of that family safety net due to the increasing impact of AIDS. It projects that orphans now taken in by grandparents will have to be taken in by aunts and uncles.
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Asia and Southeast Asia

Orphaning resulting from AIDS is not limited to Africa but is also a problem in India, as documented by Kumar 2012, and in China, as documented by Zhao, et al. 2007. Contemporary orphaning in China is also shaped by the state’s population policy limiting a family to one child. Explaining that China has seen a rise in the numbers of abandoned girls, Johnson 2004 provides a comprehensive study of orphanage and adoption solutions. Human Rights Watch/Asia 1996 presents a bleak picture of Chinese orphanage life, and the report helped to trigger reform of the system. Bringing these concerns to Japan, Goodman 2000 offers a detailed assessment of orphanage care in that country. Examining India, Khan 1991 connects orphanages to a larger system of institutional homes and family-based care.

Goodman, Roger. Children of the State: The Changing Role of Child Protection Institutions in Contemporary Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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Goodman provides a comprehensive review of yōgoshisetsu, or the orphanage-like homes serving unwanted children. Offering insight into the Japanese understanding of social welfare, he details the homes’ children, case workers, organization, effectiveness, and future challenges. In the 1960s–1990s, “missing parents,” parental death, and divorce led to the placement of children in the homes.
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Human Rights Watch/Asia. Death by Default: A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China’s State Orphanages. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
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Dating from 1996, this report revealed a pattern of extreme neglect and abuse at state-run orphanages in China. Created to care for abandoned children, the orphanages exhibit high mortality rates. The report calls for an investigation of the orphanages and for management and legislative reforms.
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Johnson, Kay Ann. Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China. St. Paul, MN: Yeong & Yeong, 2004.
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Johnson examines the increase in female infant abandonment resulting from China’s “one child” policy. The book details the care provided by Chinese orphanages and informal fostering and the solution offered by overseas adoption.
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Khan, M. Basheer Ahmed. “The Foster Care System in India.” Child Welfare 70.2 (1991): 243–259.
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This foundational study provides a comprehensive overview of the numbers of dependent children in India, the welfare of those children, and the various forms of care available to them. Institutional care includes orphanages and cottage homes. Family-based care includes “sponsorship,” or charitable funding given to the family, guardianship, and adoption.
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Kumar, Anan. “AIDS Orphans and Vulnerable Children in India: Problems, Prospects, and Concerns.” Social Work in Public Health 27.3 (2012): 205–212.
DOI: 10.1080/19371918.2010.525136 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Kumar provides a comprehensive assessment of the AIDS orphan problem in India. Arguing that intervention programs are crucial, Kumar shows that they need to be expanded and implemented more efficiently and can be modeled after successful programs in other countries.
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Zhao, Guoxiang., Xiaoming Li, Xiaoyi Fang, Junfeng Zhao, Hongmei Yang, and Bonita Stanton. “Care Arrangements, Grief, and Psychological Problems among Children Orphaned by AIDS in China.” AIDS Care 19.9 (2007): 1075–1082.
DOI: 10.1080/09540120701335220 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This article estimates the numbers of AIDS orphans in China, reviews the different care arrangements available to AIDS orphans, and focuses on the children’s psychological problems. Issues of grief, anxiety, loneliness, and stigmatization are addressed.
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Middle East

Very little research exists on contemporary orphaning in the region of the Middle East. One exception is Bargach 2002, a provocative study of child abandonment and adoption in the North African country of Morocco.

Bargach, Jamila. Orphans of Islam: Family, Abandonment, and Secret Adoption in Morocco. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2002.
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This book examines abandoned children in Morocco, emphasizing the practices of secret adoption and legal guardianship. In addition to defining changing laws and policies, it provides a sophisticated exploration of the cultural understandings of “kafala” or the gift of care. Topics such as illegitimacy, childrearing, and fictive family bonds are explored by interweaving interviews and analyses of laws, film, proverbs, and stories.
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Russia and Eastern Europe

The former Soviet Union encouraged the institutionalization of parentless, abandoned, or disadvantaged children in orphanages. The term “social orphan” is used in Russia and eastern Europe to refer to a child who has at least one living parent but is left without parental care. The large numbers of social orphans and the poor quality of the institutions caring for them have created a social crisis. Current research investigates the historical reasons for orphaning and the failures of the orphanages (see Morrison 2004, Rockhill 2010, and Shipitsyna 2007). Shipitsyna 2007 also focuses on the psychological impact orphaning has on the child. Fujimura 2005 examines street life as an alternative to orphanage care.

Fujimura, Clementine K. Russia’s Abandoned Children: An Intimate Understanding. With Sally W. Stoecker and Tatyana Sudakova Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005.
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By volunteering at an orphanage and working with programs for street children, Fujimura is able to document the current situation of abandoned children in Russia. In addition to explaining the routines of the orphanage and rituals of street life, she investigates how Russian understandings of abandonment, childhood, suffering, and violence contribute to a cultural disapproval of the orphan.
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Morrison, Lynn. “Ceausescu’s Legacy: Family Struggles and Institutionalization of Children in Romania.” Journal of Family History 29.2 (2004): 168–182.
DOI: 10.1177/0363199004264899 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This essay examines the large number of orphanages and the over 100,000 orphans discovered in Romania after the fall of Ceausescu. Providing a case study of a small rural town, Morrison documents the horrific conditions in its orphanage for disabled children and the social reasons why families felt forced to send children there.
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Rockhill, Elena Khlinovskaya. Lost to the State: Family Discontinuity, Social Orphanhood, and Residential Care in the Russian Far East. New York: Berghahn, 2010.
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The “social orphan” is the focus of this detailed study of residential care in Russian in the 1990s. Providing an analysis of the struggle to balance state and familial forms of power, Rockhill explains the position of the parents and the children in a state-run system of legal courts and orphanage-like homes.
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Shipitsyna, Lyudmila M. Psychology of Orphans. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse-Indigo, 2007.
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This handbook describes the historical and ongoing problem of orphaning in Russia, providing a clear definition of social orphaning, including its scope and contributing factors. It assesses the orphanage system and advocates for family-based care. The book focuses on the negative psychological effects of the institutionalization on orphans.
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Abandoned Children and Foundlings

Although the orphan is typically defined as a child whose parents have died, recent historical research has focused on the child “orphaned” by abandonment. Historically, the abandoned child, often termed a “foundling,” relied on being found, taken in, and raised by a kind individual, charitable organization, or orphanage. Although not orphaned due to parental mortality, foundlings are often considered orphans by their culture. Bardet 1973 and Fuchs 1984 are groundbreaking studies of foundlings and foundling hospitals in France that initiated the study of this phenomenon. Boswell 1988, an influential and popular study, reconstructs the remarkably widespread, although now largely forgotten, practice of child abandonment in classical and premodern times. Boswell’s work triggered widespread interest and ongoing debate concerning this phenomenon, as seen in Tilly, et al. 1992. Nelson 2011 offers an example of current research that continues to build on Fuch’s work. Kertzer 1993 and Terpstra 2005 examine child abandonment in Italy. Evans 2005 explores abandonment in 18th-century London, while Miller 2008 focuses on 19th-century New York. Panter-Brick and Smith 2000 collects essays that, taken together, examine abandonment as a global phenomenon.

Bardet, Jean-Pierre. “Enfants abandonnés et assistés à Rouen.” In Hommages à Marcel Reinhard: Sur la Population Francaise au XVIIe et XVIIIe Siécles. Edited by J. Dupaquier, 19–47. Paris: Société de Demographie Historique, 1973.
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The author of numerous articles on child abandonment in France, Bardet opened up this topic for future research. One of his first essays, this groundbreaking study examines foundling hospitals in Rouen and emphasizes their high mortality rates.
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Boswell, John. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. New York: Vintage, 1988.
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Boswell’s groundbreaking and provocative book uncovered patterns of extensive child abandonment in Europe in classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages. His book demonstrates that children were regularly abandoned or “donated” and taken in by the church or charitable families. Initiating a new area of research, his work has encouraged extensive debate and further investigation.
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Evans, Tanya. Unfortunate Objects: Lone Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
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This insightful book approaches child abandonment from the abandoning mother’s perspective. In addition to describing a woman’s world of work, community, and marriage, much of the study focuses on the mother’s interactions with the London Foundling Hospital.
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Fuchs, Rachel. Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.
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A foundational study of the foundling hospital, Fuchs focuses on the Hospice des Enfants Assistes in Paris and the large numbers of children it served. Emphasizing the creation of a centralized social welfare system, Fuchs analyzes the mothers who abandoned their children, the wet nurses who took in the children, and the supervision of wet nurses and foster parents.
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Kertzer, David I. Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control. Boston: Beacon, 1993.
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Kertzer examines the enforced use of foundling homes in 19th-century Italy. In order to preserve family honor, unwed women were forced to give up their children to foundling homes, which were marked by high infant mortality rates.
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Miller, Julie. Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century New York City. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
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Miller explains the foundling’s association with poverty and illegitimacy. She provides in-depth analysis of the records of four different New York foundling asylums. She also examines the growing sentimentalization of children, which encouraged alarm over the increasing numbers and mistreatment of foundlings and resulted in the founding of the asylums.
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Nelson, Jessica. “Gender, Age, and the Abandonment of Children in Eighteenth-Century Dijon, France.” Journal of History of Childhood and Youth 4.1 (2011): 116–135.
DOI: 10.1353/hcy.2011.0007 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Providing case studies of two orphanages in Dijon, France, this essay examines social attitudes regarding the abandonment of children. It argues that abandonment was an intentional child-care strategy, employed to secure shelter, food, clothing, education, and work training. Parental death and the child’s age, class, and gender were factors in abandonment.
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Panter-Brick, Catherine, and Malcolm T. Smith, eds. Abandoned Children. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge, 2000.
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Examining the situation of the abandoned child in Europe and beyond, this collection’s essays address 18th- and 19th-century foundlings in Portugal, Italy, and the Azores; children separated from families in the Greek and Mozambique wars; street children in Brazil, Nepal, and Thailand; refugee children in Nepal; and children exiled from Chile.
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Terpstra, Nicholas. Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
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Emphasizing the 16th and 17th century’s high mortality, abandonment, and orphaning rates, Terpstra examines orphanages in Florence and Bologna. He provides a comprehensive history of their founding, acceptance of children, daily schedules for boys and girls, administrative structures, income and expenses, and outcomes for the orphans.
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Tilly, Louise A., Rachel G. Fuchs, David I. Kertzer, and David L. Ransel. “Child Abandonment in European History: A Symposium.” Journal of Family History 17.1 (1992): 1–23.
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This symposium addresses the abandonment of children from a variety of historical perspectives. Essays emphasize the high mortality rate of abandoned children. Questioning some of the conclusions of Boswell 1988, the researchers maintain that children were often adopted for selfish reasons, such as the need for labor, rather than out of kindness.
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Apprenticed and Indentured Orphans

In the past, one “solution” to the problem of orphaning was to see the orphan in terms of the labor he or she might provide. In the early modern period, a prolonged apprenticeship was an expected means of developing necessary work skills, and this was a planned stage of adolescence for the poor and laboring classes. Orphans were often incorporated into this work structure, placed into apprenticeships by orphanages, schools, or Poor Law guardians. A low-level apprenticeship for orphans is often termed a “pauper apprenticeship,” indicating that the apprenticeship contract was arranged to ameliorate the child’s poverty and orphan status. Robin 2001 indicates that this apprenticeship training was a successful means of preparing orphans for work and independence. Rahikainen 2004 examines the European context of apprenticeships, emphasizing both industrial and farming work. Tikoff 2010 offers a fascinating case study of a Spanish charity school orphan trained as a sailor. Lane 1996 provides a foundational assessment of apprenticeship in England. As an alternative to apprenticeship, American orphans often served as indentured servants, or as cheap contracted unskilled labor. Sundue 2009 and Herndon and Murray 2009 define the working child in American, while Mitchell 2012 and Zipf 2005 examine the complex space occupied by ex-slave children who served as apprentices or indentured servants. Many historians note that, during apprenticeship, the child was removed from his or her home and sent to live and work for a master, and thus experienced a familial dislocation not dissimilar to orphaning.

Herndon, Ruth Wallis, and John E. Murray, eds. Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.
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This collection of essays focuses on the experience of orphaned or abandoned children who were “bound out” as pauper apprentices or indentured workers in 18th- and 19th-century America. Topics include the court treatment of orphans in colonial Maryland, urban and rural orphans in 19th-century Maryland, mothers’ use of the Charleston Orphan House, and the status of apprentice-orphans in Montreal.
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Lane, Joan. Apprenticeship in England, 1600–1914. London: UCL, 1996.
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Lane provides a clear and detailed explanation of apprenticeship practices, including the length of apprenticeship, gender and age of apprentices, categories of work, and education of apprentices. She includes statistics on the number of apprentices who were orphans. She also explains the pauper apprentice system, which provided work for orphaned, abandoned, and destitute children.
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Mitchell, Mary Niall. “‘Free Ourselves, but Deprived of Our Children’: Freedchildren and Their Labor after the Civil War.” In Children and Youth during the Civil War Era. Edited by James Marten, 160–172. New York: New York University Press, 2012.
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This essay investigates the uncertain status of black children freed from slavery after the Civil War, focusing on their orphan-like situation. Freed children were kept by former slaveholders, entered into legal apprenticeships, or informally “placed out” in families that needed child labor.
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Rahikainen, Marjatta. Centuries of Child Labour: European Experiences from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.
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This comparative history of European child labor traces detailed analyses of the compulsory manufacturing-type work done by children in orphanages and workhouses and the agricultural work done by children fostered out from orphanages to farming families. Tracing trends in children’s work, the study discusses children’s work in factories, agricultural settings, urban settings, and domestic service.
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Robin, Isabelle. “Orphans, Apprenticeships, and the World of Work: The Trinité and Saint Esprit Hospitals in Paris.” History of the Family 6.3 (2001): 439–453.
DOI: 10.1016/S1081-602X(01)00083-5 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This essay examines the apprenticeship contracts of legitimate male and female orphans under the care of two Paris orphanages. Offering an important corrective to the commonly held image of ineffective orphan care, Robin finds that orphans experienced successful apprenticeships and entry into the working world.
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Sundue, Sharon Braslaw. Industrious in Their Stations: Young People at Work in Urban America, 1720–1810. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009.
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Exploring working children more generally, this book addresses the orphan because work records were often generated by legal cases involving the death of a parent or the Poor Law. The book details apprenticeship and bound labor, placing it the larger contexts of the fluctuating demand for labor and the increasing emphasis on schooling.
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Tikoff, Valentina K. “Adolescence in the Atlantic: Charity Boys as Seamen in the Spanish Maritime World.” Journal of Early Modern History 14.1–2 (2010): 45–73.
DOI: 10.1163/138537810X12632734396981 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This article examines the Royal School of San Telmo in Seville, a maritime orphanage that was both a charity institution and navigational school. It offers insight into the working world of young orphans trained as sailors by tracing the progress of Francisco de Cáceres Martinez, a ward in the school from 1788 to 1802.
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Zipf, Karin L. Labor of Innocents: Forced Apprenticeship in North Carolina, 1715–1919. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
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This book examines changing apprenticeship practices in North Carolina, arguing that apprenticeships served as means of exerting power over the laboring poor, the free African American population, and women who wanted to claim their children. In the colonial era through the antebellum era, children whose fathers had died were defined as orphans and were bound out as apprentices.
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Street Children

Orphaned, deserted, and homeless children often live on the streets. Studies of street children find that many of them remain connected to their parents and are thus not truly abandoned. However, studies also find that a subgroup of street children are defined by orphaning or abandonment and lack any ties to family structure; this group is often the most difficult to reach and assist. Studies of street children reveal the continuities of this population across nations and cultures. Providing an important study of street children in Brazil, Hecht 1998 is notable for its innovative interviewing of street children. Hong 2005 defines the problem for Vietnam, Lugalla and Kibasa 2002 studies East Africa, and Pandey 1991 looks at India. Dabir and Athale 2011 offers a cross-cultural study of street children, finding similarities among the experiences of children in Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Nairobi. Uys 2000 provides a unique historical context for this population, studying transient children during American’s Great Depression.

Dabir, Neela, and Naina Athale. Street to Hope: Faith Based and Secular Programs in Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Nairobi for Street-Living Children. London: SAGE, 2011.
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Dabir and Athale study the definition, origin, and scope of street children in Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Nairobi. These studies include homeless and abandoned children, and the study of Nairobi includes AIDS orphans. In addition to defining the problems of these children, the authors outline programs that successfully serve them and argue for flexible, holistic, collaborative programs that have a spiritual component and sense of family.
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Hecht, Tobias. At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511527593 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This well-known study relies on extensive interviews with Brazilian street children and tries to understand the world of the street through their experiences. Hecht problematizes the definition of street children, finding that a low number of children live on the streets due to family abandonment, and that these street children define themselves as having broken away from a mother figure.
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Hong, Duong Kim, and Kenichi Ohno. Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy. Hanoi, Vietnam: Vietnam Development Forum, 2005.
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This discussion paper reviews existing studies of Vietnamese street children, exploring the causes of street life and the protection and investment needed to help the children. Citing a study that finds that 12.3 percent of Hanoi street children are from “broken families,” the paper considers the situation of orphaned or abandoned street children the most difficult to improve.
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Lugalla, Joe L., and Colleta G. Kibasa. Poverty, AIDS, and Street Children in East Africa. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2002.
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This collection of essays makes a direct connection between orphaning and street children. As large numbers of children have been orphaned by AIDS in Africa, the numbers of street children have risen. Divided into sections on Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, essays focus on the children’s lives, including issues of poverty, health, social networks, and prostitution, and possible solutions, such as school-based programs and the creation of new legal protections.
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Pandey, Rajendra. Street Children of India: A Situational Analysis. Allahabad, India: Chugh, 1991.
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Although dating from the 1990s, this study of six cities in India determines the facts of street children’s lives, including their food, work, and medical care. Surveys find that 19.2 percent of street children state that their father has died, and that 10.2 percent claim that their mother has died, showing orphaning to be a factor in street children’s lives.
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Uys, Errol Lincoln. Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move during the Great Depression. New York: TV Books, 2000.
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Nonacademic in form, this book combines descriptions of the experiences of “boxcar” or “hobo” teenagers and oral histories provided by people who led such lives. Many of the stories feature teens who were orphaned or abandoned. During the Great Depression, these children left institutions or families to ride freight trains in search of work, and this book captures the freedoms and dangers of that world.
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Wards and Legal Orphans

An orphan who enters a legal system is defined as a “ward.” When cared for by the court, the state, or the state’s representatives, the orphan is termed a “ward of the state.” When assigned to the care of a legally approved individual, the ward enters into a relationship with a legal guardian. Guardianship is a long-standing form of care for the orphan, especially the wealthy or landed orphan who has assets that need protection until the child comes of age. England designed courts specifically to care for orphans, and Bell 1953 provides a history of the Court of Wards, while Carlton 1974 provides a history of the Court of Orphans. Offering examples of British guardianship, Hanawalt 1993 examines medieval wards, Phillips 1995 examines 17th-century wards, and Nixon 1995 examines guardianship in the Court of Wards and Chancery. Examining orphaning in France, Brunet 2011 and Fauve-Chamoux 1996 examine the use of guardians and family councils. Haworth 2010 examines a court case defining a female ward in 19th-century Mexico.

Bell, H. E. An Introduction to the History and Records of the Court of Wards and Liveries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1953.
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This book provides the most authoritative and comprehensive history of England’s Court of Wards. An early modern court system, the Court of Wards oversaw the assignment of guardians to orphans, and thus determined their care and the protection of their inheritance. Bell reviews the court’s powers, officers, revenues, and records.
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Brunet, Guy. “So Many Orphans . . . How Could One Give Them All a Helping Hand? Family Solidarity in a Context of High Mortality in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. A Case Study: The Dombes Province (France).” The History of the Family 16.1 (2011): 1–12.
DOI: 10.1016/j.hisfam.2010.11.002 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Brunet details a 19th-century solution to orphaning in the Dombes province in France, in which the Civil Code directed a family to appoint a guardian and surrogate-guardian to care for an orphaned child. The article examines the proceedings of boards of guardians between 1810 and 1924, and finds that this system successfully cared for orphans and encouraged family solidarity.
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Carlton, Charles. The Court of Orphans. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1974.
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Carlton traces the history of the London Court of Orphans from its founding in 1276 to its conclusion with the passage of the Orphan’s Act in 1694. The court appointed guardians to orphans, and continued to monitor the guardians to make sure they could pay the orphan his or her inheritance.
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Fauve-Chamoux, Antoinette. “Beyond Adoption: Orphans and Family Strategies in Pre-industrial France.” The History of the Family 1.1 (1996): 1–13.
DOI: 10.1016/S1081-602X(96)90017-2 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
The essay explores family responses to orphaning before adoption became legal in France in 1923. The orphan was controlled by a family council that debated the child’s future in public, with input from friends and neighbors.
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Hanawalt, Barbara. Growing up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
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In 14th- and 15th-century London, wealthy orphans were the subject of careful legal attention, as Hanawalt’s research into wardship cases demonstrates. Orphans were assigned legal guardians by the mayor’s court, with their inheritance protected and their marriages approved by the court. Hanawalt provides detailed examples of both successful and abusive wardships.
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Haworth, Daniel S. “Revealing an Orphan’s Tale from Nineteenth-Century Mexico.” In Contesting Archives: Finding Women in the Sources. Edited by Nurpur Chaudhuri, Sherry J. Katz, and Mary Elizabeth Perry, 20–34. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010.
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This essay explains the discovery, in the state archives of Guanajuato, Mexico, of a legal case involving a 19th-century female orphan’s desire to marry without the consent of her guardian. The case offers insight into the subordinated position of the adolescent female and her lawyer’s case-winning appeal to patriarchal authority.
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Nixon, Cheryl L. “Creating the Text of Guardianship: 12 Car II.c.24 and Cutter of Coleman Street.” Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700 19 (1995): 1–28.
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This article examines the decline of feudal wardship, overseen by the Court of Wards, and the emergence of new legal definitions of guardianship, overseen by the Court of Chancery. This shift in the legal understanding of the orphan is connected to the depiction of the orphan in a Restoration comedy.
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Phillips, C. B. “Orphan and Family: Bringing Up Edward Harpur’s Orphan Daughters, 1650–66.” Historical Research 68.167 (1995): 286–301.
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This article provides a detailed analysis of the situation of four daughters placed under the guardianship of their uncle in 17th-century Chester, England. Revealing the tensions that define guardianship, one of the daughters later sued the uncle for mismanagement, although records show the estate was well managed.
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Fostered and Adopted Orphans

Much of the history of the orphan is difficult to trace because the parentless child seems to have often been absorbed into existing family structures; the orphan might be taken in by relatives or community members, for example. Today, this might be labeled informal “adoption,” but most countries did not have legal forms of adoption before the 20th century. As a result, the family-based care of orphans is often termed “fostering.” Fostering can include the informal and often undocumented care of an orphan by relatives, which is also called “kinship care.” Gager 1996 and Vassberg 1998 provide excellent studies of fostering in early modern France. Fostering can also include the formal assignment of an orphan to a family for contracted, paid care. “Fostering out” or “placing out” was often a specific step in the institutionalized orphan care arranged by an orphanage, and this approach is explored by many sources listed in the Orphanages section of this essay. Contemporary studies of adoption and foster care constitute their own area of study, as outlined in the Oxford Bibliographies Online article Adoption and Fostering. Bartholet 1999, Hegar and Scannapieco 1999, Herman 2008, and Toth 1998 directly address orphans or place fostering into its historical context, and they are therefore included in this section. Owusu-Bempah 2010 and Stelmaszuk 1999 place the kinship care of orphans into an international context. Leinaweaver 2008 shows the importance of understanding an indigenous culture in relation to fostering and adoption, in this case looking at indigenous Andean families in Peru.

Bartholet, Elizabeth. Nobody’s Children: Abuse and Neglect, Foster Drift, and the Adoption Alternative. Boston: Beacon, 1999.
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Arguing for adoption as a solution to neglected children in the welfare system, Bartholet terms these children “modern-day orphans.” Within a larger discussion of the history and policies defining the care of these children, Bartholet analyzes foster care, kinship care, and institutional care options.
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Gager, Kristin Elizabeth. Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
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Gager analyzes two forms of adoption in early modern Paris: the adoption of orphans and foundlings from institutional care, and the private adoption of a child exchanged between two families. The orphanages investigated include the St. Esprit, Hotel-Dieu, Hospice of the Enfants-Dieu, Trinité, and Couche. Gager emphasizes the importance of uncovering adoption and “fictive” ties in an era that did not support legal adoption.
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Hegar, Rebecca L., and Maria Scannapieco, eds. Kinship Foster Care: Policy, Practice and Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195109405.001.0001 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This collection contains opening and closing essays by Hegar that place current kinship fostering in the context of historical practices of informal kinship adoption, orphanage care, and placing out into fostering structures.
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Herman, Ellen. Kinship by Design: A History of Adoption in the Modern United States. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
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Although this book’s focus is on adoption, it necessarily includes orphans in its discussion of children entering into family-based systems of care. As Herman shows, in the first half of the 20th century, the orphanage was gradually replaced by placing out, foster care, and increasingly regulated adoption. In the second half of the century, adoption came to include interracial, special needs, and international adoption.
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Leinaweaver, Jessaca B. The Circulation of Children: Kinship, Adoption, and Morality in Andean Peru. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
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This ethnographic study examines the practice of child circulation in Peru, defining and explaining the informal exchange of children among indigenous Andean families. Peruvian forms of child circulation can be misunderstood as child abandonment rather than a type of child adoption that complicates international definitions of legal adoption. Leinaweaver shows the importance of understanding an indigenous culture’s complex history and practice of adoption.
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Owusu-Bempah, Kwame. The Wellbeing of Children in Care: A New Approach for Improving Developmental Outcomes. London and New York: Routledge, 2010.
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This book advocates kinship fostering as an effective form of child care. Owusu-Bempah provides cross-cultural examples of kinship care, which takes place among the Nso in Cameroon and the Navajo in the United States, and the historical fostering out of orphans, which took place in England and the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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Stelmaszuk, Zofia Waleria. “The Continuing Role of Kinship Care in a Changing Society.” In Fostering Kinship: An International Perspective on Kinship Foster Care. Edited by Roger Greeff, 21–34. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999.
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This essay connects Poland’s current kinship fostering practices to a history of informal fostering of orphans. It examines the Communist approach to dependent children, in which family-based fostering was replaced by state-run homes. The homes created a unique form of “social orphans,” or children whose ties with the family were broken in order to prove the efficacy of the state’s care.
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Toth, Jennifer. Orphans of the Living: Stories of America’s Children in Foster Care. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
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A non-academic resource, this book provides histories of residential homes (several of which are orphanages) for foster children. It features personal narratives of children abandoned or neglected by parents and dependent on a flawed foster care system.
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Vassberg, David E. “Orphans and Adoption in Early Modern Castilian Villages.” The History of the Family 3.4 (1998): 441–458.
DOI: 10.1016/S1081-602X(99)80257-7 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Vassberg determines that at least 38.5 percent of children in rural Castile were orphans, leading to the practice of informal adoption and guardianship, countering the claims of legal historians that adoption did not exist at this time. Vassberg shows that the history of informal adoption is difficult to trace, but can be located on census records.
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Orphanages

The history of orphaned children is often equated with the history of the institutions that cared for them—and the orphanage looms large in such studies. In Europe, orphanage-like structures, such as asylums and hospitals, date back to classical times and were an important expression of charitable ideals in the early modern era. Great Britain had relatively few similar structures, and the 18th-century London Foundling Hospital is generally considered England’s first large institutional home for abandoned children. Orphanages in Europe and England often took in foundlings in addition to or instead of orphans. In the United States, the orphanage flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries, offering a solution to the increasing numbers of parentless children resulting from urbanization, immigration, and poverty. Studies of orphanages typically take the shape of an institutional history of one orphanage, providing a chronological retelling of different phases in its development. These histories draw on the detailed records left by such institutions, and they often explain admissions policies, administrative structures, and funding sources. Details of the daily lives of orphans are captured in these records, including the food, clothing, health care, education, work, and religious practices of the children.

Europe

Throughout Europe during the early modern period, many major cities created forms of institutionalized care for orphans and abandoned children. In addition to providing a solution to an excess of parentless children, orphanages and foundling hospitals enabled a public expression of the city’s leaders’ ideals of charity. Hunecke 1991 and Jacobi 2009 demonstrate that the institutions also fostered new practices of abandonment and new notions of child welfare. Many first-rate histories of European orphanages exist, including Gavitt 1990 on the orphanage in Florence, McCants 1997 on the orphanage in Amsterdam, Safley 1997 and Safley 2005 on the orphanages in Augsburg, and Sherwood 1988 on the foundling hospital in Madrid.

Gavitt, Philip. Charity and Children in Renaissance Florence: The Ospedale degli Innocenti, 1410–1536. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.
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This study emphasizes the Ospedale degli Innocenti’s connection to the Renaissance’s humanistic ideals of charitable giving, which led to the creation of an orphanage that attempted to replicate family life. The orphanage’s sources of income, administrative structure, use of wet nurses and slaves, and child mortality rates are examined.
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Hunecke, Volker. “Intensità e fluttuazioni degli abbandoni dal XV al XIX secolo.” In Enfance abandonnée et société en Europe, XIVe–XXe siècle: Actes du colloque international organisé par la Società italiana di demografia storica . . . [etc.], Rome, 30 et 31 janvier 1987. Edited by Philippe Boutry, 27–72. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1991.
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Hunecke examines the creation of large foundling institutions designed to offer centralized care for abandoned children. His provocative article evidences that the abandonments increased when institutionalized care was made available.
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Jacobi, Juliane. “Between Charity and Education: Orphans and Orphanages in Early Modern Times.” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 45.1–2 (2009): 51–66.
DOI: 10.1080/00309230902746396 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Analyzing early modern care for orphans, Jacobi offers important findings that counter a “discipline”-focused understanding of the orphan: the orphan is a “child at risk,” orphanages offered the majority of children in their care the ability to integrate successfully with society, and orphanages were shaped by religion, gender, and class.
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McCants, Anne E. C. Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
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McCants explores the charitable goals of the Municipal Orphanage of Amsterdam. Unique to this orphanage is its focus on middle-class families. The study includes extensive analysis of the orphanage financial and work records, allowing McCants to connect the city’s developing capitalist economy to its ideals of charity
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Safley, Thomas Max. Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg. Atlantic Highland, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997.
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In this economic history of Augsburg’s City Orphanage and Catholic and Lutheran Orphanages, Safley provides detailed analyses of the finances of the institutions, emphasizing income and expenses. Extensive research reveals the orphanages’ precapitalistic, charity-based structures of taxes, subventions, donations, and earnings.
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Safley, Thomas Max. Children of the Laboring Poor: Expectation and Experience among the Orphans of Early Modern Augsburg. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005.
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Safley examines 5,734 orphaned children of laborers and artisans living in Augsburg orphanages between 1572 and 1806. Dividing the book into sections on “before,” “in,” and “after” the orphanage, Safley explains that the children were given an education and work assignments in the orphanage before being bound out as apprentices.
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Sherwood, Joan. Poverty in Eighteenth-Century Spain: The Women and Children of the Inculsa. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.
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Sherwood positions the Inculsa, Madrid’s foundling hospital, as an expression of Spain’s sense of responsibility for the poor. The history emphasizes women’s control of the institution and the increasing medicalization of the care of the children.
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Great Britain

In England, the institutionalized care of orphans was slow to develop, due in part to the parish-based Poor Law system that was responsible for the care of abandoned children. Manzione 1995 provides a history of one of the few 16th-century orphanages, Christ’s Hospital. England’s first and most famous home for abandoned children is the London Foundling Hospital, founded in 1739. The Hospital offers a compelling history (Hogarth created England’s first art gallery in it, and Handel held fund-raising musical performances for it) and left detailed records, ensuring that it would be the focus of sustained historical research. Levene 2007, McClure 1981, Pugh 2007, and Weisbrod 1985 provide compelling histories of the institution and its charges. Pinchback and Hewitt 1973 provides a classic study of the other forms of care available for children without families in the 18th and 19th centuries. Cemented in the public imagination through the literary works of Charles Dickens, the orphanage is often equated with an abusive Victorian workhouse plagued by starvation and disease. Defined by the 19th-century New Poor Law, the highly regulated workhouse required that the poor work for their care; this institution is the subject of a number of histories, including Driver 1993 and Fowler 2008. The Irish example of the “industrial school” that targeted the poor and was administered by the Catholic Church is examined in Raftery and O’Sullivan 2001.

Driver, Felix. Power and Pauperism: The Workhouse System, 1834–1884. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
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Focusing on debates over New Poor Law implementation and workhouse design, this book offers one of the first explorations of the workhouses as a national system connected to social and political power. Sections focus on parentless paupers, or “indoor children,” who were the subject of numerous experiments in industrial training, such as district schools and cottage homes.
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Fowler, Simon. Workhouse: The People, the Places, the Life behind Doors. Kew, UK: The National Archives, 2008.
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Fowler provides a popular history of 19th-century workhouse life, focusing on the workhouse tasks, routines, staff, and population. Explaining that orphans and abandoned children made up approximately 40 percent of the pauper children in the workhouse, a chapter is devoted to their work training and schooling.
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Levene, Alysa. Childcare, Health and Mortality at the London Foundling Hospital, 1741–1800. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007.
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This detailed analysis of the London Foundling Hospital traces the entrance of children into the hospital, probable death, placement with a nurse, and upbringing in a fostering relationship. The study is supported by extensive quantitative analysis of the hospital’s records.
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Manzione, Carol Kazmierczak. Christ’s Hospital of London, 1552–1598: “A Passing Deed of Pity.” Cranbury, NJ, and London: Associated University Presses, 1995.
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Providing an institutional history of Christ’s Hospital in London from 1552 to 1598, Manzione emphasizes the Hospital’s goal of serving fatherless children of the deserving poor. Manzione’s detailed analysis of administrative and financial records reveals that the orphanage served children of various classes and attempted to enact compassionate care.
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McClure, Ruth. Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.
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The respected standard history of the London Foundling Hospital, this book opens with the life of founder Thomas Coram, followed by a comprehensive analysis of the hospital’s administrative structure, financial challenges, and admissions and mortality rates. The book details how the foundlings were admitted, cared for by wet-nurses in the country, returned for schooling, and entered into apprenticeships.
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Pinchback, Ivy, and Margaret Hewitt. Children in English Society. Vol. 2, From the Eighteenth Century to the Children Act. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
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This classic study focuses on abandoned, pauper, and street children and the care they received in workhouses, orphanages, charity homes, and prison settings. The study also contains chapters on the transportation of children to the colonies and the abandonment of illegitimate children.
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Pugh, Gillian. London’s Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital. London: Tempus, 2007.
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This book provides a history of the London Foundling Hospital from its founding by Thomas Coram in 1739 to its reconfiguration as an adoption agency, the Coram Family, in 1955, its current form. As it details the evolving structure of the hospital, it charts continuities and changes in the institution’s definitions of charity and attitudes towards children.
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Raftery, Mary, and Eoin O’Sullivan. Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools. New York: Continuum, 2001.
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In this popular history of orphanages run by the Catholic Church in Ireland from 1868 to 1969, Rafferty and O’Sullivan uncover the abusive conditions of what were termed “industrial schools.” The book documents the over 100,000 children who, although typically not orphans, were separated from their family due to their parents’ poverty and placed in these institutions.
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Weisbrod, Bernd. “How to Become a Good Foundling in Early Victorian London.” Social History 10.2 (1985): 193–209.
DOI: 10.1080/03071028508567620 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Focusing on the London Foundling Hospital and its Victorian admissions procedures, this article isolates qualities for a successful admission: the abandoning mother must submit to close questioning and confess to the child’s illegitimacy and the secrets of the child’s delivery.
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United States

In America, the orphanage flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries, offering a solution to the increasing numbers of parentless children resulting from urbanization, immigration, and poverty. The most probing studies of the orphanage, including Hasci 1997, Cmiel 1995, and Seraile 2011, connect the institution to larger social attitudes, positioning the orphanage as a barometer of changing ideas concerning poverty, child welfare, and race. Zmora 1994 offers a good example of a study that seeks to counter preconceived notions of orphaning by providing evidence of effective orphanage care. Numerous institutional histories of individual orphanages exist. Among the most compelling are Cashin 2001, on the oldest orphange in the country; Cmiel 1995, on the Chicago Nursery and Half-Orphan Asylum; Chmidling 2010, on the Kansas Orphan Home; Geisberg 2012, on the Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphan Schools; Jones 2012, on orphanages in Richmond; and Seraile 2011, on New York’s Colored Orphan Asylum. In addition to charting the histories of orphan institutions, these studies are a rich source of information on the lived experiences of orphaned children, often detailing their daily routines of schooling, work, and play.

Cashin, Edward. Beloved Bethesda: A History of George Whitefield’s Home for Boys, 1740–2000. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001.
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Cashin recounts the history of George Whitefield’s “orphan house,” one of the first orphanages in America. The colonial period, in which the minister Whitefield preached to raise money for the orphanage, recruited orphans, encouraged a slave economy to support the orphanage, and attempted to open a college, rightfully receives the most attention.
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Chmidling, Catherin. History of the Kansas Orphan’s Home, 1887–1962. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2010.
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This history provides a helpful review of theories of social engineering, altruism, evolution, and kinship that inform orphanage institutions. Combining archival research and interviews, Chmidling analyzes the entrance of children into the Home, their age and gender distribution, and their placement out into adoptive or indenture relationships.
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Cmiel, Kenneth. A Home of Another Kind: One Chicago Orphanage and the Tangle of Child Welfare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
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Founded in 1860, the Chicago Nursery and Half-Orphan Asylum evolved from an institution caring for parentless poor children to a home for emotionally disturbed children. Cmiel emphasizes the daily lives of the children in the orphanage, the women volunteers who ran the institution, the relationship of the orphanage to Chicago-area agencies, and changing understandings of child welfare.
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Geisberg, Judith. “Orphans and Indians: Pennsylvania’s Soldiers’ Orphan Schools and the Landscape of Postwar Childhood.” In Children and Youth during the Civil War Era. Edited by James Marten, 188–205. New York: New York University Press, 2012.
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Geisberg traces the decline and closure of Pennsylvania’s Soldier’s Orphan Schools, which were founded to care for the orphaned children of Civil War soldiers. Charged with neglecting the children in their care, the schools were criticized in racial and economic terms that compared the orphans to Indians and immigrants.
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Hasci, Timothy A. Second Home: Orphan Asylums and Poor Families in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
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Hasci’s comprehensive history of orphan asylums in the United States traces the growth and decline of the orphanage. He provides a helpful typology of asylums, labeling them “isolating,” “protective,” or “integrative.” He also compares practices across asylums, defining their admission of the orphan, daily rituals and routines, educational programs, and administrative structures.
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Jones, Catherine A. “Reconstructing Social Obligation: White Orphan Asylums in Post-emancipation Richmond.” In Children and Youth during the Civil War Era. Edited by James Marten, 173–187. New York: New York University Press, 2012.
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This essay focuses on two orphanages in Richmond, Virginia, and their expanding public welfare responsibilities in the wake of the Civil War. Emphasizing these orphanages’ care of half-orphans, exclusion of black children, and use of placing-out practices, the essay explains how child welfare arguments maintained prewar racial and class structures.
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Seraile, William. Angels of Mercy: White Women and the History of New York’s Colored Orphan Asylum. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.
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A focused study of the Colored Orphan Asylum, the first orphanage for African-American children in the United States, founded by white, predominantly Quaker women in New York in 1836. Seraile explains how the orphanage overcame the external pressures of racial hostility and its own internal problems which included securing finances, determining educational and religious goals, and connecting with the African-American community.
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Zmora, Nurith. Orphanages Reconsidered: Child Care Institutions in Progressive Era Baltimore. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.
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Examining three private orphanages in Baltimore, Zmora counters stereotypical images of the orphanage, arguing that these institutions provided high quality educational, vocational, and medical services to children. Drawing from a wide range of primary sources, including letters and interviews, Zmora shows how these orphanages were connected to their communities, served the needs of the poor, and often helped to rebuild families.
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Jewish Orphanages

Several studies focus on the Jewish orphanage in the United States; this institution has a unique history of preserving religious practices and identity in addition to caring for its children. Bogen 1992 examines a New York orphanage, Polster 1990 examines a Cleveland orphanage, and Friedman 1994 examines these two orphanages and the Jewish Foster Home of Philadelphia. Polster 1990 and Bogen 1992 emphasize the orphanage’s role in “Americanizing” an immigrant Jewish population, exploring the German Jewish desire to acculturate eastern European Jews in their new country.

Bogen, Hyman. The Luckiest Orphans: A History of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
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Bogen’s study of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum (1822–1941) finds that alumni had a generally positive view of their time spent there. The chronological history traces institutional problems and reforms, detailing the orphan’s daily lives, including their meals, residences, jobs, and medical care.
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Friedman, Reena Sigman. These Are Our Children: Jewish Orphanages in the United States, 1880–1925. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994.
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Examining three Jewish orphanages located in New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland, Friedman emphasizes the Jewish interest in enacting communal care, Americanizing immigrant Jews, and implementing progressive policies. She offers details analyses of the orphan’s parents’ death, illness, or destitution. The book shows how the orphanage served as a “parent” before being replaced by the foster care model.
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Polster, Gary Edward. Inside Looking Out: The Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum, 1868–1924. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990.
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This study offers the argument that middle-class German Jews provided care for eastern European immigrant orphans, especially Russian Jews, because they sought to Americanize the children. The acculturation processes provided by the orphanage included religious instruction, jobs and commerce, and strict behavioral rules.
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Contemporary Orphanages

Orphanages continue to operate in the United States and around the world. Often discussed as a form of “residential care,” the orphanage has gained new relevance due to the need for care for AIDS orphans. Tolfree 1995; Courtney and Iwaniec 2009; and Zhao, et al. 2009 address orphanages for AIDS orphans. These works critique the orphanage model and argue that is must be improved or replaced with family care. Carr 2007 and Mackenzie 1999 address the American orphanage and argue that it is a successful model of care: Carr 2007 offers a personal meditation, while Mackenzie 1999 presents scholarly research that supports the orphanage.

Carr, Martha Randolph. A Place to Call Home: The Amazing Success Story of Modern Orphanages. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2007.
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A personal meditation on rather than an academic analysis of orphaning, this books offers a series of case studies of orphanages, including the Virginia Home for Boys and Girls, Girard College, and the Mercy Home for Boys and Girls. Interweaving the author’s memoir, stories of children in orphanages, and orphanage histories, this book argues that orphanages are a successful form of orphan care.
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Courtney, Mark E., and Dorota Iwaniec, eds. Residential Care of Children: Comparative Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195309188.001.0001 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This informative collection of essays examines the characteristics of residential care in eleven different countries. Orphan-centered essays address Romania’s recent attempts to transition away from the Communist model of state-run orphanages, Botswana’s inadequate number of residential homes given the AIDS orphan crisis, and South Africa’s new “social development” philosophy and new regulation of residential care.
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Mackenzie, Richard B., ed. Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1999.
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This collection of essays addresses the role of the orphanage in providing care for children today, offering a compelling argument that residential care can improve the current child welfare system. The anthology contains sixteen essays addressing the history of the American orphanage, the definition of child welfare, the connection between orphanages and adoption, and the regulation and cost of orphanages. Several essays call for more research on topics such as the psychological effects of orphanage care.
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Tolfree, David. Roofs and Roots: The Care of Separated Children in the Developing World. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1995.
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Tolfree analyzes residential care in the developing world and argues that extended family or community networks would provide better care. He examines residential care institutions and the orphaned and abandoned children placed in them, including the increasing numbers of children orphaned by AIDS. He concludes by offering suggestions for productive fostering and adoption practices.
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Zhao, Qun, Xiaoming Li, Linda M. Kaljee, Xiaoyi Fang, Bonita Stanton, and Liying Zhang. “AIDS Orphanage in China: Reality and Challenges.” AIDS Patient Care and STDs 23.4 (2009): 297–303.
DOI: 10.1089/apc.2008.0190 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
This essay is the first to examine the orphanages built to house AIDS orphans in China, a process that began in 2004. In-depth interviews with twenty-three children and five AIDS workers reveal that children feel well-treated but lack psychological support programming.
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Orphan Trains

One of the most fascinating examples of orphan care in America, the “orphan trains” offered a unique solution to the growing numbers of poor orphaned or abandoned children. Children from New York City were placed on trains and sent west, where they were resettled in farm families that needed labor. This unique form of “placing out” was conceptualized by Charles Loring Brace, a founder of the New York Children’s Aid Society. Holt 1992 and O’Connor 2001 provide equally compelling histories of Brace’s experiment and the approximately 250,000 children placed out between 1854 and 1929.

Holt, Marilyn Irvin. The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
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Holt provides a clear and accessible chronological history of the orphan train phenomenon. Her study opens with an explanation of the motivating ideals that informed “placing out,” including the image of the worthy orphan created by literature and the idealization of a healthy rural life. She then traces Charles Loring Brace’s creation of the orphan train in 1854, the expansion of the system in the 19th century, and the end of placing out in the 1920s.
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O’Connor, Stephen. Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
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O’Connor organizes his book to emphasize themes defining the orphan trains, including ideas of humanity, journey, miracles, and neglect. This comprehensive book offers a chronological history supported by extensive quotations from primary sources and first-person “testimonies” from people who experienced placing out.
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The Orphan in Literature

A parentless figure who must negotiate a complex world on his or her own, the orphan is a source of rich imaginative possibilities. Much of what we think we know about the orphan is based on fiction: fairy tales such as Cinderella, novels such as Oliver Twist, children’s and youth literature such as Harry Potter, and popular sources such as the comic Little Orphan Annie have become part of a Western cultural mythology defining the orphan. Together, popular British and American orphan stories have created an image of the orphan as a poor, abused, or downtrodden “waif” who, without the help of nurturing and guiding parents, somehow manages to overcome obstacles to achieve success; although the orphan might start out as powerless victim, he or she often becomes a powerful hero. The orphan offers a hopeful image of resilient self-creation and thus has proven to be an enduring fictional character.

American Literature

The orphan character has been central to American literature from the colonial era to today, appearing in sources ranging from Puritan sermons to recent films. Pazicky 1998 explores the image of the orphan as “outsider” in colonial and 19th-century literature. Weinstein 2004, Sanders 2011, and Nelson 2003 examine the orphan’s popularity in the 19th-century novel, emphasizing the sentimental valuing of the family that the orphan encourages. Loichot 2007 examines novels and poetry that present the orphan as a figure of community, while Gailey 2006 addresses the conflicted representations of the orphan in 20th-century film. Nonacademic in style, Simpson 1987 provides an example of an autobiographical approach to orphaning, showing how personal history can be connected to stories of fictional orphans.

Gailey, Christine Ward. “Urchins, Orphans, Monsters, and Victims: Images of Adoptive Families in U.S. Commercial Films, 1950–2000.” In Adoptive Families in a Diverse Society. Edited by Katarina Wegar, 71–90. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
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This essay examines the depiction of the adopted orphan in film, analyzing plots featuring interracial adoption, dysfunctional families, and sentimentalized parents. This analysis shows that the orphan is portrayed as a “cheerful” innocent or evil monster.
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Loichot, Valérie. Orphan Narratives: The Postplantation Literature of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007.
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Loichot examines literature’s intervention in the plantation and slavery structures of the American South, structures in which family ties are broken and children are “orphaned.” Focusing on the fiction and poetry of Saint-John Perse, Édouard Glissant, William Faulkner, and Toni Morrison, the book emphasizes the “orphan narratives” and imagined communities that literature uses to recreate the family.
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Nelson, Claudia. Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850–1929. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
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Tracing a crucial shift in the understanding of the orphan, this book examines the evolution from the 19th century’s valuing of the fostered child as a source of labor to the 20th century’s interest in connecting the adopted orphan to ideals of the nurturing family. Nelson connects historical changes in fostering and adoption to fictional portrayals of those practices, offering a model of literary and cultural study.
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Pazicky, Diana Loercher. Cultural Orphans in America. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
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This book argues that fictional orphans embody uncertainties and conflicts within American identity by representing marginalized religious, racial, and ethnic groups. Chapters focus on the orphan figure in Puritan writings, captivity narratives, Revolutionary War rhetoric, and sentimental “orphan tales.”
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Sanders, Joe Sutliff. Disciplining Girls: Understanding the Origins of the Classic Orphan Girl Story. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.
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Analyzing 19th- and 20th-century American children’s literature aimed at girls, Sanders examines how popular sentimental fiction featuring orphans models proper female attitudes and emotions. The orphan plots enact “affective discipline” in which positive, loving affection proves to be a powerful tool for training girls into proper gender roles.
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Simpson, Eileen. Orphans: Real and Imaginary. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987.
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Combining personal narrative with general literary and historical analysis, Simpson recounts her experiences as an orphan. She uses that narrative as a foundation for a nonacademic overview of the orphan in history, autobiography, fiction, and myth.
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Weinstein, Cindy. Family, Kinship, and Sympathy in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511485695 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Weinstein examines how 19th-century fiction dramatizes the family defined by nonbiological relationships, including orphaning, fostering, and adoption. Sentimental fiction imagines orphans being reintegrated into the family through contractual and emotional relationships rather than biological relationships.
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British Literature

British literature offers a wide range of orphan figures, including the “lost child,” orphan, bastard, foundling, workhouse orphan, and emigrant orphan. Auerbach 1975 provides a now classic definition of the orphan as a “dispossessed, detached self” (p. 395). An equally clear and helpful article, Kimball 1999, outlines the central character and plot patterns defining orphan folktales and children’s stories. Estrin 1985 traces the Renaissance lost child plot, Nixon 2011 and Zunshine 2005 examine 18th-century depictions of the orphan and foundling, and Corbett 2008, Dever 1998, and Peters 2000 examine the Victorian and early-20th-century orphan. The orphan allows the literary text to dramatize familial loss and reunion, which, in the British context, raises issues of inheritance, family lineage, and marital choice.

Auerbach, Nina. “Incarnations of the Orphan.” English Literary History 42.3 (1975): 395–419.
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This classic article argues that the orphan is an archetypal character that allows literature to explore the idea of an isolated, lonely, and dispossessed self. Auerbach presents the orphan character as a dynamic representation of creative energy and possibility. She explores the novels Moll Flanders, Pamela, Tom Jones, Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, and Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.
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Corbett, Mary Jean. Family Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008.
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Corbett examines literary plots in which women and men marry people from within their own families. As readings of authors such as Charlotte Bronte show, adopted orphans provide an opportunity for this type of intra-familial marriage.
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Dever, Carolyn. Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud: Victorian Fiction and the Anxiety of Origins. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511585302 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Taking the Victorian novel’s interest in the dead or missing mother as its focus, this study assesses the orphan characters who mourn the loss of their mother. Dever argues that the novel’s obsession with the absent mother prefigures Freud’s and psychoanalytical theory’s obsession with the same figure.
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Estrin, Barbara L. The Raven and the Lark: Lost Children in Literature of the English Renaissance. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1985.
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Focusing on the works of Shakespeare, Sidney, and Spenser, Estrin analyzes the fictional foundling and the “lost child plot,” in which an aristocratic child is lost, found and raised by peasants, and later reunited with his parents. Connecting this plot to Renaissance debates about art and nature, this book argues that the plot expresses hopefulness in its depiction of adoption and reunion.
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Kimball, Melanie A. “From Folktales to Fiction: Orphan Characters in Children’s Literature.” Library Trends 47.3 (1999): 558–578.
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This study examines fifty folktales from different cultures and isolates the orphan plots’ defining structures and themes, such as mistreatment, quests, and obstacles. The essay then locates these structures and themes in the children’s novel The Secret Garden.
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Nixon, Cheryl. The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Law and Literature: Estate, Blood, and Body. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011.
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Comparing representations of the orphan in 18th-century literature to real orphans appearing in Parliamentary, Chancery, and King’s Bench legal cases, Nixon recovers the “valued” orphan. She argues that the orphan was often depicted as a wealthy, desirable figure, allowing issues of inheritance, marriage, and bodily mobility to be explored.
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Peters, Laura. Orphan Texts: Victorian Orphans, Culture and Empire. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000.
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Peters explores the Victorian novel’s positioning of the orphan as a scapegoat, which allows the family to exclude threats to ideals of home, class, race, and nation. Peters examines texts ranging from well-known novels (such as Wuthering Heights) to anonymously authored orphan stories. She connects the novel to its historical contexts, including orphan workhouses and orphan emigration.
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Zunshine, Lisa. Bastards and Foundlings: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005.
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Examining fictional representations of the illegitimate child, Zunshine differentiates between the bastard character, or the typically male child born out of wedlock, and the foundling character, or the typically female child who is abandoned and proven to be legitimate when reunited with parents. Zunshine compares 18th-century plays and novels to historical sources, such as Foundling Hospital records.
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Well-known Orphan Characters

Several orphan characters have become well-known icons of literature due to the popularity of “classic” novels (including Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn) and novels for adolescents (including L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series). Each of these orphans has generated considerable critical examination. Adrian 1984, Hochman and Wachs 1999, and Taylor 2001 examine Dickens’s representation of the orphan, with an extensive analysis of Oliver Twist. Lamonica 2003 examines Jane Eyre, emphasizing the orphan girl’s need to develop independence and self-reliance. Wirth-Nesher 1986 and Ryan 2008 examine Huck Finn and his capacity for morality. Taylor 2009 examines the orphan’s journey of self-creation in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Reynolds 2009 examines the Harry Potter series and its reliance on Victorian models of the orphan figure.

Adrian, Arthur. Dickens and the Parent-Child Relationship. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1984.
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Providing a basic introduction to parent-child relationships in Dickens’s novels, this book focuses on orphans, arguing that they “comprise the largest single group” of children in his work (p. 72). Often adopted by flawed surrogate parents, these orphans suffer abuse that allows Dickens to comment on social injustice.
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Hochman, Baruch, and Ilja Wachs. Dickens: The Orphan Condition. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.
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Hochman and Wachs explore Dickens’s repeated use of the orphan to define the orphan condition: a sense of being in flux and alone in the world, uncertain of parentage, family, work, status, and property. Analyzing famous characters such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations, the book examines scenes of orphan neglect and abuse as well as scenes of the orphan’s fantasy and longing.
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Lamonica, Drew. “We Are Three Sisters”: Self and Family in the Writing of the Brontes. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.
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Chapter 3, “Jane Eyre: The Pilgrimage of the ‘Poor Orphan Child’” (pp. 67–94), focuses on Jane Eyre as a novel of development in which the orphan searches for kinship and is transformed into an independent woman. Lamonica emphasizes Jane’s ability to create her own definitions of self, family, faith, and home.
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Reynolds, Susan. “Dumbledore in the Watch Tower: Harry Potter as a Neo-Victorian Narrative.” In Harry Potter’s World Wide Influence. Edited by Diana Patterson, 271–292. Newscastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2009.
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Reynolds explores Harry Potter’s orphan status, connecting it to Victorian understandings of the orphan. She emphasizes that Harry is the subject of constant surveillance, fitting into theories of control and discipline that can be applied to the orphan.
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Ryan, Ann M. “Mark Twain and the Mean (and Magical) Streets of New York.” In Cosmopolitan Twain. Edited by Ann M. Ryan, and Joseph B. McCullough, 21–63. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008.
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This essay connects Twain’s early writing and Huckleberry Finn to his understanding of abandoned and orphaned children. It emphasizes Twain’s experience seeing street children in New York City.
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Taylor, Jenny Bourne. “‘Received, a Blank Child’: John Brownlow, Charles Dickens, and the London Foundling Hospital—Archives and Fictions.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 56.3 (2001): 293–363.
DOI: 10.1525/ncl.2001.56.3.293 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
In this important article, Taylor connects Dickens’s fiction to the history of the London Foundling Hospital. John Brownlow, who is both the real-life Hospital Secretary and a fictional character in Oliver Twist, facilitates these connections. Taylor shows how the hospital redefines illegitimacy by erasing the identity of foundlings, while also maintaining a fantasy of familial reunion.
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Taylor, Kristen. “Home to Aunt Em: Sentimental Adoption in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 34.4 (2009): 379–393.
DOI: 10.1353/chq.0.1936 Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »
Taylor places the orphan heroine Dorothy in the context of turn-of-the-century attitudes towards orphans. Taylor argues that new notions of sentimentalized adoption and new theories of the coherent self inform The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s depiction of its orphan and her journey of self-construction.
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Wirth-Nesher, Hana. “The Literary Orphan as National Hero: Huck and Pip.” Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 15 (1986): 259–273.
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Comparing Huck Finn and Oliver Twist, Wirth-Nesher emphasizes that these characters’ orphan status leads to the development of a mature moral code. She also examines how each embodies a sense of national morality.
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Orphans byCheryl NixonLAST REVIEWED: 28 April 2017LAST MODIFIED: 22 April 2013DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0121

Introduction

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Orphans
by
Cheryl Nixon
LAST REVIEWED: 28 April 2017
LAST MODIFIED: 22 April 2013
DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0121