No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2019
The debate over the practice of proxy adoption sheds light on changing notions of proper intercountry adoption practices and standards of family planning as they developed in the mid-twentieth century. The practice of proxy adoption was born out of a loophole in U.S. immigration legislation, initially used by Americans to adopt European orphans after World War II. After the Korean War, the practice was again utilized to bring Korean children in even greater numbers to the United States. Through proxy adoption, adoptive parents bypassed the standard checkpoints of the adoption process as established by U.S. social welfare agencies. Although initially hailed as a humane practice, proxy adoption was ultimately banned in 1961 after a successful antiproxy adoption campaign waged by a coalition of social welfare workers, Catholic leaders, and U.S. senators. The role of Catholic agencies in this debate is essential, yet remains largely unexplored. This article sheds light on this significant and underresearched history of the Catholic institutions involved in the proxy adoption debate.
The Catholic agencies, namely the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the Catholic Committee for Refugees, stood apart from both the government social welfare establishment and other humanitarian actors. Their actions must instead be understood through the context of their own institutional history of domestic social welfare programs and overseas humanitarian work, dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article analyzes their relationship with the U.S. social welfare establishment, as well as joint advocacy efforts to reform intercountry adoption practices.
I would like to thank Mae Ngai, Matthew Connelly, Sabeel Rahman, and Nelson Castaño. I am grateful to the participants and staff who organized the Columbia University Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Interdisciplinary Conference (February 2015) and the Columbia University International and World History Graduate Student Conference (May 2014). My thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Policy History for their feedback.
1. Although the data is limited, the adoption of foreign children became increasingly prevalent after World War II. Ellen Herman, Kinship by Design: A History of Adoption in the Modern United States (Chicago, 2008), chap. 6. In the 1940s, most adopted children came from Europe, and in the next two decades most children came from Asia. Weil, Richard H., “International Adoptions: The Quiet Migration,” International Migration Review 18, no. 2 (1 July 1984): 276–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Although the first U.S. provision for intercountry adoption was passed in 1945 in order to address the needs of refugees and unaccompanied minors from Europe, the 1953 Refugee Relief Act marked a watershed moment; unlike previous legislation, this act contained explicit adoption provisions. Kirsten Lovelock, “Intercountry Adoption as a Migratory Practice,” International Migration Review 34, no. 3 (1 October 2000): 907–49. Adoptive parents used proxy adoption to adopt children from Germany and Greece in the aftermath of World War II, but the use became widespread in Korea after the passage of the 1953 Refugee Relief Act. Catherine Ceniza Choy, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (New York, 2013), 20, 86. Rachel Winslow argues that, between 1948 and 1961, immigration law became the chief vehicle for an improvised international adoption policy because conflicting state laws and a lack of federal or international adoption legislation created a policy vacuum. Winslow, Rachel, “Immigration Law and Improvised Policy in the Making of International Adoption, 1948–1961,” Journal of Policy History 24, no. 2 (2012): 319–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Ellen Herman describes the development of adoption, which had initially been considered a “simple humanitarian act that anyone might perform.” Ellen Herman, Kinship by Design, 20. In 1900, there was little to no state supervision of child adoption in the United States, but by 1950 state control of adoption had become pervasive. Herman calls the new process “kinship by design,” and defines it as a “campaign to rationalize kinship,” which replaced sentimentality, intuition, accident, and common sense with professional management, scientific validation, and expanded public bureaucracy. Ellen Herman, “The Paradoxical Rationalization of Modern Adoption,” Journal of Social History 36, no. 2 (2002): 353. For discussion of the centrality of gender and the role of evangelical women in this rationalization process, see Kunzel, Regina G., Women, Fallen, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945 (New Haven, 1995).Google Scholar
3. The bureau was founded in 1912 and later folded into the Social Security Administration in 1946.
4. In 1938, the CWLA published for the first time a set of adoption standards titled “Child-Placing in Families: A Manual for Students and Social Workers.” Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the rationalizers debated with those who opposed regulated adoption over cases that involved children of racially and ethnically mixed heritage and children with physical and mental disabilities. This debate culminated in 1955 at a major national conference in Chicago that was intended to celebrate the “peaceful revolution” in American adoption. In 1958, the CWLA published a new set of standards, marking the standardizers and rationalizers’ victory in American adoption.
5. Barbara Melosh writes extensively on this subject, and analyzes how social welfare officials created measurements of “fitness” based on financial, emotional, and physical health. She argues that these adoption officials, “the rationalizers,” championed the idea of kinship by design and their work began and continued to be a racialized discourse. Melosh, Barbara, Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).Google Scholar
6. For example, in 1925 the state agency Child Welfare League of America had standardized the number of required visits to observe the physical and emotional needs of child being met in the adoptive home (four per year) and established an official trial period of at least one year that must follow any adoption. Herman, “The Paradoxical Rationalization,” 345.
7. Choy, Global Families, 87. Holt criticized social welfare groups for being against proxy adoption and encouraged adoptive parents to write to their senators in favor of proxy adoption.
8. Klein, Christina, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley, 2003), 23.Google Scholar
9. Ibid., 43–44.
10. Here I refer to the distinction that Arissa Oh makes in her article “A New Kind of Missionary Work: Christians, Christian Americanists, and The Adoption of Korean GI Babies, 1955–1961,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 33, no. 3/4 (1 October 2005), 161–88, and in her book To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption (Stanford, 2015), chap. 2.
11. Arissa Oh writes that although Harry Holt became emblematic of the Christian Americanist adoption movement, Holt “never articulated a connection between his Christian faith and nationalist beliefs.” Oh, To Save the Children of Korea, 80.
12. Choy, Global Families, 85.
13. Jay Racusin, M., “Pearl Buck Pleads for Orphans: ‘Half -Americans Dying in Korea,’” New York Herald Tribune, 7 January 1959.Google Scholar Danforth, Joan, “Orphans Not Wanted,” New York Herald Tribune, 23 October 1957.Google Scholar
14. Catholic Relief Services was originally founded as War Relief Services in 1943. The NCWC was originally founded as the National Catholic Welfare Council in 1917 and changed its name to Conference in 1922. Catholic Charities USA was founded in 1910.
15. For more on the racialization of intercountry adoption, see Graves, Kori, “Domesticating Foreign Affairs: The African-American Family, Korean War Orphans, and Cold War Civil Rights” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2011).Google Scholar See also Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption (Durham, 2012), and Kim Park Nelson, “Mapping Multiple Histories of Korean American Intercountry Adoption” (January 2009), The U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS (USKI) Working Paper Series. For more on the role of the Republic of Korea Government (ROKG), see Eleana Kim, “The Origins of Korean Adoption: Cold War Geopolitics and Intimate Diplomacy” (October 2009), The U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS (USKI) Working Paper Series. Kim writes that the ROKG actively supported the growth of intercountry adoption, given that their spending was highly skewed toward military programs, at the expense of social welfare programs.
16. I draw the term “scientific charity” from Dorothy M. Brown and Elizabeth McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 15. See also Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls for an analysis of social work institutions’ laying claim to scientific objectivity through the pathologization of single mothers.
17. American Relief for Korea Pamphlet, 4 June 1951, Folder Korea, Box 38, Collection 23, Center for Migration Studies, New York (hereafter CMS).
18. Kim, “The Origins of Korean Adoption,” 4. Soojin Pate argues that Korean children were transformed into “militarized subjects” through the “militaristic gaze,” and this phenomenon facilitated the myth of American exceptionalism and promoted U.S. imperialist ambitions. She argues that without the U.S. military presence, Korean adoption would most likely never have existed. Soojin Pate, From Orphan to Adoptee (Minneapolis, 2014), 40.
19. Barstow, James S., “N.Y. High School Class ‘Adopts’ Korean Girl,” New York Herald Tribune, 23 December 1955.Google Scholar
20. Klein, Cold War Orientalism, 23.
21. Letter from Mrs. George E. Bollinger to Sister Pauline of White Lily Orphanage, 10 March 1958, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Letter from Mrs. Peter Paulette to Captain Clearwater, 16 February 1958, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
25. Letter from Mr. and Mrs. Leo R Martin to Captain Clearwater, 15 February 1958, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
26. Letter from Grace Stephanson to Emil Komora, 31 March 1958, Folder 4883, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS. For more discussion of this, see Oh, To Save the Children of Korea, 67–74.
27. Grace Stephenson to Komora, 24 April 1958, Folder 4883, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
28. Komora to Charles McCarthy, 21 January 1953, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
29. Ibid.
30. Komora to Sergeant Overstreit, 9 February 1954, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
31. Notes on meeting held at ISS, 21 February 1958, Folder 4883, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
32. Komora to Charles McCarthy, 21 January 1953, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
33. “The Problem of Transportation Costs for Korean Orphans Immigrating to the United States under the Refugee Relief Act,” January 1956, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
34. David L. Rolbein, Chief Division of Liaison, to John B. Coulter, Agent General of UNKRA, 31 January 1956, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
35. Both Tobias Hübinette and Eleana Kim argue that the Korean government’s underinvestment in social welfare services led to the reliance on intercountry adoption as a form of population control. Hübinette, Tobias, “Nationalism, Subalternity, and the Adopted Koreans,” Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 1 (2007): 117–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kim, Eleana Jean, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (Durham, 2010), 68–69, 217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36. “How to Adopt Korean Babies,” Ebony, 1 September 1955.
37. In 1953, Reverend Charles McCarthy wrote to Edward Swanstrom asking for his counsel: “We have had several inquiries recently from people saying that they would like to adopt Korean orphans and bring them to the U.S.” From McCarthy to Swanstrom, 18 January 1953, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
38. Angela Sonaggere to Emil Komora, 3 April 1956, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
39. Bertha Holt, Seed from the East (Oxford, 1956), 25.
40. Ibid.
41. Kern, Will, “Made Something of Life: Adoption-by-Proxy Founder Shepherds Waifs to New Homes Adoption-by-Proxy Founder Explains Aims,” Los Angeles Times (1923–Current File), 19 March 1961.Google Scholar
42. “8 Korean Orphans in Oregon Family: Children of U.S. Soldiers Are Adopted by Couple Who Now Have Six,” New York Times, 4 December 1955.
43. The article exaggerates, as Congress did not pass a “special law,” but rather, allowed these Korean orphans to immigrate as nonquota immigrants. “Farmer Who Adopted 3,000 Orphans Dies: Harry Holt of Oregon Struggled to Find American Homes for Children of Korea,” Los Angeles Times (1923–Current File), 29 April 1964.
44. Letter from Harry Holt to Senator Neuberger, presented in U.S. House, Committee of the Judiciary, Certain Korean War Orphans, Hearing, 28 July 1955 (11819 S.rp.1216).
45. In his congressional testimony, the head of the Child Welfare League of America referred to the scant background-check process that Holt uses for potential adoptive parents: “[Holt] had placed some thousand children and primarily uses a credit-reference-checking bureau, and during our study we found a number of families who had been very brutal and should never have been given children in the first place,” from U.S. House, Committee of the Judiciary, Congress, Committee of the Judiciary, Relating to Admission to U.S. of Alien Orphan Children, 23 July 1959, Washington, D.C.), 1959.
46. Letter from Erwin W. Raetz to Senator Neuberger, presented in U.S. House, Committee of the Judiciary, Certain Korean War Orphans, Hearing, 28 July 1955 (11819 S.rp.1216).
47. Statement of Katherine Oettinger, Chief of the U.S. Children’s Bureau, 20 May 1959, Subcommittee of Immigration and Naturalization, Senate Committee of the Judiciary, Folder 15, Immigration: Alien Orphans, 1957–61, Box 24, USCCB Legal Records, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter ACUA).
48. Carper, Elsie, “Hearing to Air Refugee Needs: End of Abuses Sought Many Found Unsuitable Born Out of Wedlock,” Washington Post, 22 June 1959.Google Scholar
49. Bertha Holt describes their decision to adopt Korean children as God’s work: “Only God could bring about such a miracle.” From Bertha Holt, Seed from the East, 44.
50. Overseit to Komora, 12 February 1954, Folder 4882, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
51. Komora to Stephenson, 24 February 1958, Folder 4883, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
52. Harry Holt to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Ross, 3 December 1958, Folder: Harry Holt Adoption Programs Correspondence, 1958–59, Box 9, Collection 24, CMS.
53. Ibid.
54. Holt wrote, “As far as we are concerned, a Christian is a Christian whether they call themselves Catholic or Protestant. We are firm believers of unity of the Body of Christ. The scripture says, ‘Is Christ divided?’ we are extremely sorry that Satan has been able to divide the testimony of Christians, but we know that there is no division in the Body of Christ.” Ibid.
55. Between 1955 and 1961, the Holt Adoption Program oversaw 57 percent of adoptions, the NCWC, 5 percent, the ISS, 6 percent. The remaining children were placed by the Korean Ministry and Seventh Day Adventists. From Oh, To Save the Children of Korea, 82.
56. Komora to John W. Horvat (director, Catholic Charities, Kansas City, Kansas), 28 August 1957, Folder 4884, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
57. Ibid.
58. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Januaz to Sister Philomena (Star of the Sea Children’s Home), 22 December 1956, Folder 4884, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
59. Sister Philomena to Daniel Quinn, 8 January 1957, Folder 4884, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
60. The NCWC was originally founded as the National Catholic Welfare Council in 1917 and changed its name to National Catholic Welfare Conference in 1922. Catholic Charities USA was founded in 1910.
61. Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 4–8.
62. Catholic leaders influenced social welfare legislations in the 1930s—specifically, they worked on the 1934 Social Security Bill, which eliminated the possibility of mandated state participation in financing child welfare services. They achieved this through a blitz of letter-writing and connections with Catholic congressmen. See Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 23.
63. The major religious groups—Catholic Committee for Refugees, Church World Service, United Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society—met with the ISS and CWLA in New York.
64. Komora to William Consedine, 20 June 1958, Folder 15, Immigration: Alien Orphans, 1957–61, Box 24, ACUA.
65. The ISS wrote this amendment.
66. Harmon Burns to William Consedine, 25 June 1959, Folder 15, Box 24, ACUA.
67. Laurin Hyde and Virginia P. Hyde, “A Study of Proxy Adoptions,” June 1958, Box 2, Collection 24, CMS.
68. Ibid.
69. Harry Holt to Mrs. Peter Silic in Kansas City, February 1957, Folder 4884, Box 153, Collection 23B, CMS.
70. The report claims: “Pressures for quick action have resulted in greatest use of adoption by proxy.” See Laurin Hyde and Virginia P. Hyde, “A Study of Proxy Adoptions.”
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. David Doyle (NCWC, Legal Department) to Komora, 25 August 1958, Folder 15, Box 24, ACUA. Doyle enclosed a letter, which had been addressed to the Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary by the Secretary of HEW.
74. Section 4 of the Immigration and Nationality Act had authorized the issuance of an unlimited number of nonquota immigrant visas to certain alien orphans, under 14 years of age. This section was extended for two temporary periods and finally expired on 30 June 1961, after which the INA was permanently amended to grant nonquota status to eligible orphans. During the four years in which the nonquota visas were temporarily allowed, 9,620 orphans entered the United States. From Walter and Ribicoff, “The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952,” 51.
75. United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Relating to Admission to U.S. of Alien Orphan Children, 23 June 1959, 86th Cong., 1st sess., Washington, D.C. (Statement of Ernest Mitler).
76. Ibid.
77. U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Relating to Admission to U.S. of Alien Orphan Children, 23 June 1959, 86th Cong., 1st sess., Washington D.C. (Statement of William Kirk).
78. Carper, Elsie, “Hearing to Air Refugee Needs: End of Abuses Sought Many Found Unsuitable Born Out of Wedlock,” Washington Post, 22 June 1959.Google Scholar
79. “Proxy Adoptions Decried as Risky: ‘Sight Unseen’ Choice Held Unwise by International Casework Agency,” New York Times, 11 May 1958.
80. “Proxy Adoptions of Aliens Scored: Loophole in U.S. Law Said to Lead to ‘Mail-Order Baby Business’ Abroad,” New York Times, 1 August 1958.
81. Carper, Elsie, “Hearing to Air Refugee Needs,” Washington Post, 22 June 1959.Google Scholar
82. “Problems of Orphaned; Abandoned Kids Subject of New Comprehensive Study,” Chicago Daily Defender, 25 October 1961.
83. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Amendments to the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, 3 May 1956, 84th Cong., 2nd sess.
84. John O’Grady to Reverend C. H. LeBlond, “The Care of Catholic Children Way from Their Own Home by Governmental Agencies,” 7 March 1952, Folder 21, Box 84, Social Action: Child Welfare, 1949–55 Records, ACUA.
85. John O’Grady to Howard J. Carroll, 15 April 1946, Folder 20, Box 84, Social Action: Child Welfare, 1929–46 Records, ACUA.
86. Catholic Charities official Bernard Fagan became president of the New York’s Conference of Social Workers. Catholic social worker Jane Hoey became assistant director of the New York City Welfare council. Reverend John C. Carr, director of Catholic Charities in Buffalo, New York, served as president of the NYS Conference on Social Work. Catholic social worker Rose McHugh became assistant commissioner of the NY Department of Social Welfare. Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 154.
87. Brown and McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us, 62.
88. Catholic official Mary Irene Atkinson was appointed a position in the Child Welfare Division of the USCB.
89. Katharine Lenroot to Monsignor Howard J. Carroll, 8 April 1946, Folder 20, Box 84, Social Action: Child Welfare, 1929–46, ACUA.
90. Zitha R. Turitz, director of the CWLA Standards Project, to John O’Grady, 9 December 1955, Folder 26, Box 18, Child Welfare League of America, Committee on Adoption Standards (1), ACUA.
91. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Subcommittee of the Committee of the Judiciary, Statement of Emil Komora, May 1957, Folder 15, Box 24, Immigration: Alien Orphans, 1957–61 Records, ACUA.
92. Ibid.
93. Harmon Burns to William Consedine, 5 May 1959, Folder 15, Box 24 Immigration: Alien Orphans, 1957–61 Records, ACUA.
94. Ibid.
95. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Relating to General Immigration Matters. Volume 1, 20 May 1959, 3 May 1956, 86th Cong. 1st sess.
96. Ibid.
97. Oh, “Into the Arms of America,” 368.
98. Francis Eugene Walter and Abraham Alexander Ribicoff, “The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as Amended Through 1961,” International Migration Digest 1, no. 1 (1 April 1964): 42. It is important to note that although proxy adoption was banned by legislation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner later opened a loophole by interpreting the law to allow Americans to adopt children from abroad without first seeing them as long as they proved to a licensed adoption agency that they intended to readopt the children in the United States. Therefore, proxy adoption could effectively continue with the involvement of the social work establishment. Oh, To Save the Children of Korea, 150. At the behest of critics and adoptee activists, the South Korean government fortified its adoption regulations in 2011 and now requires family court approval for every minor child adoption. Yune, Jinsu, “The Reform of Adoption Law in South Korea,” International Survey of Family Law 2013 (2013): 366–68.Google Scholar The South Korean government also has made concerted efforts to promote domestic adoptions over intercountry ones. Prébin, Elise M., Meeting Once More: The Korean Side of Transnational Adoption (New York, 2013), 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
99. Adoption of Oriental Children by American White Families: An Interdisciplinary Symposium, May 1950, Child Welfare League of America, New York, 1960, 56.
100. “Problems of Orphaned; Abandoned Kids Subject of New Comprehensive Study,” Chicago Daily Defender, 25 October 1961.
101. For example, in Montgomery v. Ffrench, 299 F.2d 730, 735 (8th Cir. 1962), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit denied a Missouri couple’s appeal of the attorney general’s denial of their application to permit the immigration of a Korean child whom they had adopted by proxy. The court recognized that Congress had banned proxy adoption in an effort to eliminate hardships and abuses, and these petitioners, who had adopted children in the past, had a history of noncooperation with local adoption agencies and had repeatedly refused to allow local adopting agencies to make investigations into their home.
102. Hyde and Hyde, “A Study of Proxy Adoptions.”