This opinion piece from the New York Times explores the ways in which "Americans are helping to take children in poor countries away from their parents," particularly in Latin America, through support of orphanages abroad by volunteering and/or donating. "Rich countries closed their orphanages long ago. Decades of research shows that institutions — even the best — harm children, who simply do better in every way in a family. Within one, they can get consistent adult attention and engagement. But orphanages are expanding in poor countries," says the author, Tina Rosenberg, co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network. Rosenberg recommends, instead, that Americans support the same strategies that wealthy countries use when considering how to best support vulnerable children in developing contexts: family reunification and foster care.
What drives the growth in orphanages isn’t motherless children. It’s donors and volunteers from countries that don’t use them.
The article describes the work of Casa Viva, an organization in Costa Rica that helps reunify children with their families, places children in temporary family-based care (foster care) when necessary, and finds permanent adoptive families for the children who cannot be reunified. Casa Viva was founded by an American couple, the Aspegrens, who initially began their missionary work running an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. They soon realized the harm they were doing and changed course. “We went to give children family,” said Philip Aspegren. “We were surprised to see that all the children had family already." Rosenberg also describes the work of RELAF and its foster care pilot programs in five states in Mexico.
Rosenberg explains some of the ways in which volunteering in orphanages is harmful to children, primarily the attachment issues that it exacerbates and the systems of institutionalization that it perpetuates. "Volunteers from rich countries make children’s lives worse in two ways," says Rosenberg. "One, paradoxically, is by hugging them. By definition, every child in an orphanage has been abandoned. Their attachment issues get worse with each volunteer who showers them with love for a week or two — and then flies away. Volunteers are also perpetuating a system that takes children from their families. The word 'orphanage' is a misnomer, because the vast majority of children in orphanages have at least one living parent. These parents give up their children because they are too poor to care for them."
If poverty creates orphans, the solution should be less poverty, not more orphanages. But because of Western donations and volunteering, orphanages cost governments nothing.