The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1890-03-04
%F0UNDLINGS IN DEMAND.
Both Married aud Single People
Want to Adopt Them.

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Orphan infants and foundlings are
adopted by childless married couples
to a greater extent than most people
imagine. Hiram S. Shurtleff, of the
State Board OF Health, Lunacy and
Charity, who has had long experience
in this matter, said to a Boston Her
aid reporter recently&"The little
waits are adopted by persons of all
classes, including some of our wealth.
lest citizens, and We see to it that all
who apply for children in the custody
OF this department are capable OF
taking proper care of them. Most of
those who resort to adoption are mar
ried couples who have resigned all
hope OF having children OF their own.
Sometimes, however, a young
couple WHO have been married only
two or three years come to us. but 1t
is usually suggested to them that
they should defer adopting children
until they have had time to raise O.
family of their own. Others are old
persons whose sons and daughters
have left them to establish homes on
their own account, and who adopt
young children as companions for
their declining years. Still others are
single women who do not intend to
marry. These are not always old
maids, but frequently young women
of a maternal temperament. All per-
sons adopting children are very sensi-
tive about it, and are especially anx-
ious that their wards should grow up
in ignorance of their real parentage.
One couple, to my knowledge, moved
to a different part of the State when
their adopted child reached an in
intelligent age, in order that, in a
town where they were not known, it
should never learn that it was not
their own offspring,
Another gentleman, who used to
drive about Boston with his adopted
son in a stylish equipage, gave up
business here and removed to a West
ern city, SO attached were he and his
wife to their child. People are at first
very particular about the parentage
of the babies they want to adopt,
generally demanding their pedigrees
for fifty years back, but we rarely
know anything of these matters, and
what we do know is never to the
credit of the children's parents. 1t is
sufficient for the eligibility Of q
baby for adoption that it should
possess no hereditary faint OF disease
or criminality. Being taken on trial
it then rarely fails to give entire salts
faction. But little preference is shown
in the long run for either sex. Some
times for q considerable period l have
noticed that nine persons out of ten
wanted boy babies, and then the de-
mand changed to girls for awhile.
1t is generally the woman who de-
sires to adopt q child, and the husband
who merely gives his consent. If it
were otherwise male infants would
probably have the first call for adop-
ton. Girls possess this advantage,
that they remain in apron strings
longer than boys. and are less likely
to lose affection for their benefactors
when they grow upand learn the facts
of their birth. In some cases two
children are adopted at once. A
couple not long ago took a boy and a
girl, that they might be playmates.
Another couple took q second child a
few years after the first, showing the
fondness of the wife for young babies.
American children are usually de-
sired-which reminds me that a lady
once laid peculiar stress on this re-
Qulf6lnenl. saying uiIdt, III Tile cilliu
should turn out % be French or other
foreign birth. it would not understand
her language when it grew up. That
is only one of many curious fancles
that would-be mothers have. The
prevailing idea. however, of getting
children through adoption is really so
common that the demand for a good
quality of the article is much larger
than the supply.