A lot of people think that residential childcare institutions, or ‘orphanages’, are an unavoidable part of life. They think that it is the only way to provide care for children without parents and for children whose parents are unable to care for them. So, it follows, that all countries must have them and that they have been around for as long as settled community living, as we know it, has been in existence. This kind of thinking is illustrated by the headline: “Rwanda Wants to Become Africa’s First Orphanage-Free Country: Here’s How”. While Rwanda’s aim to be orphanage-free is laudable, they will not be the first country.
Residential childcare institutions are not universal, and they certainly are not the only or the best way to provide care to children without parental care. So let’s have a look at how ‘orphanages’ became so widespread and how widespread they are.
Institutional care for the vulnerable, whether it be orphans, the poor or the elderly, are not a natural part of society. While I have not done an in-depth study into the subject, I am reasonably certain that the beginning of orphanages is connected to Catholicism (at that time just known as ‘Christianity’ in Europe), and its spread to wider Christianity. This makes sense, because Catholicism introduced the institutionalisation of adults in monasteries and convents. In turn, the people living in monasteries and convents would sometimes take in those in society who did not have anyone to care for them, including children.
In time, this went from a few individuals among the nuns or friars, to having special orphanages, run by the nuns or the friars. With more babies also being brought in because of the greater grip that Christian morality developed on society, leading to a stigma on unwed motherhood, which in turn led to unwed mothers finding themselves forced to abandon their babies in order to still be able to keep their place in the community.
Once Christianity broke up into a number of different schools of thought, non-Catholic faiths did not go in for monastic life, but they did continue the tradition of running orphanages – and condemning birth outside of wedlock. As greater parts of the world were being discovered, Christians of a wide variety of backgrounds travelled across the world as missionaries. Introducing far away people not only the Bible, but also the European education system and to residential institutional childcare: orphanages.
Although today you can find ‘orphanages’ in almost all countries in the world – with many of them run by Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist faith-based organisations – I do believe it is by and large a European, Christian export product.
In most countries in the world, until ‘orphanages’ were introduced children who did not have parents or whose parents were incapable of caring for them, would be absorbed and taken care of by their extended family or community. These networks were close knit and provided a safety net for those struggling to cope.
In some countries this is still the case. Of the 13 independent island nations in the Pacific Ocean only Fiji and Samoa have residential institutional childcare – on a small scale. Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Vanuatu still rely on their extended family structure to take care of vulnerable children, often with some help of government supported community services.
So, it can be done, protect children without institutions. Either by strengthening the traditional communities, or by providing modern alternatives – about which more in another blog.
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