ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 15, 1996 TAG: 9605150027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD B. McKENZIE
SOCIAL-POLICY pundits often fret that the cycles of poverty, abuse and neglect of children cannot be broken. However, those supposedly unbreakable cycles were broken with great consistency decades ago in an institutional setting - the orphanage - that has since been thoroughly trashed by commentators supposedly in search of more humane child-care programs.
There is living proof of the success of orphanages (or homes for disadvantaged, not seriously troubled, children) throughout this country: tens of thousands of orphanage alumni who have risen well above the behavioral and income standards of their parents. Indeed, the orphans have even outpaced their counterparts in the general population by sizable margins on most social and economic measures, not the least of which are education, income and attitude toward life.
Clearly, orphanages were imperfect institutions. No doubt, some were pretty bad places, and all orphanages failed some of their charges. However, the batting average for many orphanages was astonishingly high.
I have spent the past year asking nearly 1,600 alumni from nine orphanages in the South and Midwest how they have fared in life and how they look back on their childhood experiences. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the orphans, all of whom are now middle-aged or older, report a high-school graduation rate 17 percent above their peers in the general white population. They have a college graduation rate that is a nearly two-fifths higher than their counterparts, and they have a substantially higher percentage of master's, professional and doctorate degrees.
The orphans' median income is between 18 percent and 68 percent higher (depending on age group) above the median for their counterparts. That means their rates of unemployment, poverty and dependency on public-relief programs is some minor fraction of their nonorphan counterparts. Moreover, while the orphans appear to have a higher divorce rate, their incarceration rate is well below the rate for other white Americans.
Orphans report far fewer emotional problems than are reported for the general population, and few attribute their problems to their orphanage experience.
Orphans also seem to be happier than most Americans. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago has asked Americans for nearly four decades how happy they are. In 1994, 29 percent of Americans polled said they were "very happy"; 60 percent of the orphans reported being "very happy." Twelve percent of Americans said they were "not too happy"; less than 5 percent of the orphans chose that answer.
Most people seem to think that virtually all orphans yearned to be adopted or would have preferred foster care. Not so. More than 80 percent of the respondents report they never wanted to be adopted. More than 90 percent today prefer the way they grew up to foster care. In fact, nearly 90 percent indicate they had a "very favorable" or "favorable" overall assessment of their orphanages. Only 2 percent had "unfavorable" or "very unfavorable" assessments.
Granted, there may be some biases in the data. The respondents do not, and could not, represent a random sample of all orphans. At the same time, there is another downward bias that critics might be reluctant to acknowledge: The survey was among a subgroup of Americans who, if the orphanage criticisms are to be taken seriously, should have done far worse than the general population. The orphans attribute their better-than-average records to the moral and religious values, work ethic, sense of responsibility and encouragement they were given at their homes.
By constantly resurrecting images of Oliver Twist begging for food, critics of orphanages ensure that even bad family circumstances appear better than long-term stays in orphanages. The critics don't seem to get it: Many orphanages were pretty good places, certainly better than the destructive homes (traditional and foster) many of them left.
A necessary step in setting a sane new direction for child care is to set aside misconceptions about orphanages. Orphanage care was not always the best of care (as if it could be), but it was a saving grace for hordes of children in the past. The time is right for an evenhanded review of what private orphanages actually accomplished decades ago, not what Hollywood or Washington might imagine they did or did not do.
I write this column with conviction for a simple reason: I would not have been able to write it had I not had the chance to grow up the way I did, in an orphanage.
Richard McKenzie is a professor in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine.
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