My sister, who lives in San Diego, mentored a young lady she always referred to as “the teenager” through a program called CASA. It was quite an eye-opening experience, for both of them! I do remember that all communication had to be done through the CASA office, there were limits on how much money could be spent on them, and they had to observe very strict boundaries, which included no pictures on social media, and no exchanging of addresses or phone numbers.
“The teenager” was surprised that she, our brother, and I were raised by both biological parents, who were still together after 50-plus years, and that we knew who and where both of them were. She was also surprised that neither us nor anyone in our known family had run-ins with foster care or the prison system. Another surprise was that we had all attended AND GRADUATED FROM high school.
My sister was equally surprised to learn that in some neighborhoods, children really are sometimes put to bed in the bathtub, so they won’t be hit by stray bullets, and that even pre-teens have good reason to believe that they will not see adulthood, and accordingly feel hopeless.
Another example; in 1944, as a fifteen-year-old, Martin Luther King Jr spent a summer picking tobacco at a farm in Simsbury, Connecticut (to help alleviate wartime labor shortages). During the summer, he attended an integrated church and went to dinner in Hartford. In one letter he wrote to his mother, he said, “I never thought that a person of my race could eat anywhere but we ate in one of the finest restaurant[s] … And we went to the largest shows there.”
A while back, I read a self-published book by a white attorney in my region who had contracted polio as a tween, shortly before the vaccine came out. (His sister died in the same outbreak, and he’s now deceased himself.) After he no longer needed an iron lung, his father took him to Warm Springs, GA for further rehabilitation, and at some point after they had traveled far enough south from their Midwestern farm, stopped at some place that had a public restroom and wondered why the other people there looked oddly at them. Only upon leaving did they see the “COLORED” sign on the door. All they had seen was the “MEN” sign and that was good enough for them.
Some children would feel resentment - and other children might benefit from seeing that good outcomes are possible and worthwhile (as below).
One size won’t fit all - and it would be unjust to deprive children who would enjoy and benefit from the experience because other children wouldn’t benefit.
I would hope that the people responsible for the orphans would have the good judgment to know which children would benefit from a weekend staying with a family like @nearwildhaven’s sister’s and which would be harmed.
She wrote that her sister mentored a teen on a continuing basis. Not a one-time “see how the happy people dine over the holidays”. My takeaway from that post was that Big Brother/Big Sister-type programs are beneficial because they’re an ongoing mentorship.
Point taken. Some children might still resent the relatively brief (though continuing) glimpses of a better life, but the odds of a helpful outcome are certainly better.
If the Stephens’ visit with the orphan on Bewitched was the first of what was expected to be many interactions that would be a good thing (I haven’t seen the episode, but I suspect that the OP’s implication that it was a one-shot is correct).