One of the cliches of old stories (old being set any time before WWII or so, from what I’ve encountered) and movies with people waking up one morning and going to get the paper, only to discover a baby on their doorstep. You know the image: wicker basket, note pinned to it or the baby blanket saying “please take care of my baby, Billy” and the dazed adult in a robe.
I know this really happened sometimes, though how often I couldn’t say. Could the person who found the baby just of kept it without any sort of legal adoption process? There didn’t seem to be much of a process going on with the “orphan trains” of the early 1900s, so I have trouble imagining that this was a completely different case. If you did used to be able to simply keep foundlings, when did that change? How about an older kid you found, could you take them in, no questions asked, too? When did formal adoption processes of foundlings become widespread?
And if you found a baby on your doorstep tomorrow and liked the idea of being its parent, would you get any special consideration from social services, or would you have no better shot at adopting the child than anyone else?
I was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter after I was found floating in a basket among the reeds.
Seriously, though, if you found a child on your doorstep, you would find it quite a hassle in this day and age. I’m sure the authorities would question you a lot about just why the baby was there. Did you have anything to do with it? I doubt you would have any special claim on such a child. You would have to show you that you were a fit parent. And not just someone whom a child just ended up near.
As for the old days, I’m just guessing. I’m assuming that whether or not you could keep a foundling would depend upon whether or not there was enough government in place to make a fuss.
Leaving children on a doorstep has a long history (dating back the Middle Ages), though the doorstep was most likely that of a church (IIRC, some churches had a special doorbells that mothers could ring if they were leaving a child).
Once the government started providing social services, the need for the church faded out.
BTW, the Kents gave the baby to an orphanage, but came back to legally adopt.
I think even in this day and age, you’d have a claim to the child. The birthmother’s choice carries a lot of weight and by putting the child on your doorstep, she is making a choice. Granted, you’d probably have to place the child in foster care while you finished a homestudy to show you were acceptible parents, but I think chances are good you’d end up with the child - assuming such a thing were to happen.
Did it happen, almost certainly. Birth and adoption were a little more free reign before we had a lot of paperwork. I had a great aunt who was actually a cousin of my grandmother’s (not that that is ever mentioned in polite company) and was passed off as a sister her whole life. When all the kids are born at home and a baby shows up in the Spring after a Minnesota winter, if everyone knows the truth, no one is impolite enough to mention it. Everything about her - her baptismal record, birth record, says she is the biological child of my grandmother.
I’d imagine that a lot of those “babies found at the doorstep” during various times where the husband was away for a VERY extended period of time would have an “alternative story” behind them.
I’d also have to pose a WAG that prior to the requirement to record births with the government, it was possible. Following the near uniform “hospital birth”, it would have become nearly impossible.
Today, you’d have dozens of reporters camped by your door, a visit from Police, DYS, and a host of government officials. Hire a lawyer if you happen to open the door and find a baby on the doorstep.
Correct in pre-Crisis continuity. Post-Crisis they found baby Kal-el and were then snowed in for several months, so they pretended that Martha had actually given birth.
A friend of mine is the direct descendent of a baby girl found alive near her dead mother’s body along the Trail of Tears and adopted (rather informally) by the family who found her.
In the past, a lot was going to depend on who else might want the child. Sad to say, an orphan child didn’t always have a high value. I’m sure that there was a lot of informal adoption going on where government was less available. Today, I doubt that you’d get anymore consideration for having found the child unless you were an actual relative, but that is just a guess.
Yep. My Grandparents found a child that way, who was raised for years by my Great-Aunt. It was up in pre-Statehood Alaska. Actually, some women had the child and (apparently) gave it to them, as they were somewhat well off and she was a single mom and poor. No official papers were done. No gov’t official said a thing.
