Single-parent adoptions have been made in Los Angeles; Washington,
D.C.; Chicago; Portland; Minneapolis; Indianapolis; and Bridgeport,
Connecticut. In two instances, at least, the single adoptive parents
have been men. . . .
In the first hesitant efforts to attract single-parent applications
for adoption, agencies have made explicit the fact that such applicants
are being accepted only if they are interested in the hard-to-place
child. . . .
But if more and more children become “hard-to-place,”
then. . .agencies would have to begin to consider single-parent
adoption as a possibility for more and more children.
Currently, then, agencies have moved from a stance of automatically
rejecting the one-parent applicant to a highly qualified willingness
to explore such applications in specific instances. The following
standards, which are particular to the one-parent applicant situation,
seem to be evolving:
1. Some assurance is sought that the applicant has close contact
with an extended family. The availability of male relatives—uncles,
brothers, nephews, etc.—would permit the possibility of intimate
contact, for identification, with father surrogates. . . .
2. Some assurance is asked that the financial situation is such
that the adoptive mother can adequately provide for the child without
always doubling as a wage-earner, at least while the child is totally
dependent. . . .
3. Greater consideration should be given to the question of sexual
identification of the single applicant and the nature of the relationship
with the opposite sex. The implied question is, if single, why single?
if divorced, why divorced? if engaged in a healthy, heterosexual
relationship, why not married?
4. The health status of the single adoptive applicant is a matter
of greater than normal concern in the adoptive study, since any
illness robs the child of the effective care of the only parent
5. As in all adoptive studies, the question of motivation is a
matter of concern. . . . Does the applicant act out
of an aching loneliness, out of a need to have and control a source
of love and affectional response?. . . .
The Single-Parent Family and Psychosocial Dysfunctioning
Social work as a profession has made some decisions which establish
a hierarchy of the relative desirability of the variety of child-rearing
contexts. Maintaining the child in his own home is more desirable
than any kind of substitute-care arrangement; a two-parent adoptive
home is regarded as more desirable than long-term foster care; long-term
foster care is regarded as more desirable than institutionalization.
But where does the single-parent adoption fit into this hierarchy?
Is it more or less desirable than substitute care in a good institution?
Is it more or less desirable than maintaining the child in his own
home with parents who have often neglected him and, on occasion,
have abused him?. . . .
Perhaps the greatest component of the social worker’s ambivalence
and discomfort about single-parent adoption (and ambivalence and
discomfort that result in assigning such a resource a low position
in our hierarchy of preferences) is based on a dubious equation.
This widely accepted and superficially convincing equation is that
the single-parent family is likely to be a pathogenic family. However
logical the equation may be, given the special problems of single-parent
familyhood, what does the available empirical evidence tell us about
the validity of this equation?. . . .
To recapitulate the principal point being made here, the equation
which prejudices our view of the single-parent adoption suggests
that child-rearing in the single-parent family is psychogenic. However,
empirical research does not clearly support the equation that growing
up in a single-parent family is associated with increased psychic
vulnerability and a higher rate of psychiatric and emotional disability.
The evidence is conflicting and ambiguous. . . .
Research seems to indicate that children are able to surmount the
lack of a father and some of the real shortcomings of a single-parent
home. To modify an old folk saying, lack of a father is not as bad
as having a father is good.
The single-parent family appears capable of producing a product
that in very many instances is as good as the product of the two-parent
family. If, in addition, we maximize the inherent strengths of such
a family by judicious selection of applicants, by special assistance
through subsidization of the adoption, ready availability of casework
help, imaginative exploitation of organizations such as “Parents
without Partners,” the single adoptive parent can be offered
to children needing adoptive homes with some confidence that we
are providing a good home. The single-parent adoptive family is
likely to be the kind of single-parent family which is least pathogenic. . . .
We need to become more flexible in thinking about the alternatives,
different but “undamaging,” which can be productively
employed for children needing substitute families.