Children in need of foster care is not a recent phenomenon. Parents, no matter how deeply they may love their children, cannot always provide them with shelter and care.
From 1853-1929, Orphan Trains ran from eastern cities to more rural areas. Babies and young children stood the best chance of being adopted. Older children were taken as well. In an era where child labor was legal and the norm, it was acceptable practice to take a child or young teenager and put them to work in the house or the fields.
Although the our image of the orphan trains is that they took homeless waifs off the streets of New York and deposited them in Nebraska or Minnesota, the reality is many of the children remained in contact with their families and the state that received the greatest number of children was New York.
The New York Times best selling novel Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline examines the lives of two girls, one an Orphan Train child, now an elderly woman, the other a contemporary teen living in foster care. Their lives intersect as the novel goes back and forth between them, revealing the hardships they endure, the aching loneliness they fight to overcome, and finally the affection, even love, they struggle to accept.
If you want to feel what it is like to be in foster care, both in the 1920s and today, take Orphan Train out of your library. It shouldn't be hard to find. The Ramapo-Catskill system has close to 100 copies!
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