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114 7 OrphanVoyage The reason I use the term Orphan Voyage is that adopted people lose their parents, although not by death, but by a social decision that they had no part of. We are a different kind of orphan. —Jean Paton, 1994 Orphan Voyage, “a program of mutual aid and guidance for social orphans,”1 grew out of several profound insights that Jean Paton received while attending two presentations she heard in April 1962 while attending the Los Angles meeting of the Child Welfare League of America. The first presentation, by Dr. Genevieve Carter, a Southern California professor of social work, resulted in Paton’s issuance in June of her only substantive piece on illegitimacy for the year. Carter suggested that because there were so many difficulties in the lives of adopted people that“‘we’ would have to learn to be satisfied with something less than average perhaps‘ninety-percent.’” Paton fired back:“No, illegitimacy is not inferiority.” She declared that people of illegitimate birth were fully capable of a life filled with joy, hope, and fulfillment. Paton admitted that“the bastard” did not arrive at these things easily—it usually took three decades to complete the transformation—but illegitimacy was simply a fact, not something to be resented . Paton asserted that most of the problems of people of illegitimate birth arose from“a complete misunderstanding”of the social conditions in which successful and fulfilled lives could be achieved, and that this misapprehension was shared not only by illegitimates but by“nuclear social folk.”2 But it was the conclusions that Paton reached from her criticism of Carter’s single comment that were most startling and would have far-reaching results both for her own life and for adoption reform. She declared that the most valued service that any one person could do for another would be to explain these Orphan Voyage 115 adverse social conditions and experiences in order to educate those “who despair , and to encourage those who understand but falter.” Paton concluded that for these reasons, FOCUS intended“to shift itself from looking at illegitimacy to being in relationship with those who are on the way to fulfillment,developing ourselves and our resources out of this communication.” Related to this shift in outlook was an additional insight that Paton received at the Child Welfare League of America meeting from a second paper, this one delivered by Marshall D. Schechter, a Beverly Hills child psychiatrist in private practice.3 Paton dubbed the paper Schechter read at the 1962 Child Welfare League of America meeting “the Schechter report.” Writing to her FOCUS subscribers, Paton succinctly summarized Schechter’s thesis, which, like an earlier published paper,revealed the existence of“an amazingly large-scale psychiatric problem in the population of adopted people.”4 Her initial reaction bordered on triumphal: “This was no surprise to yours truly.” Paton, however, believed that this revelation must have been shocking to the hundreds of people in the audience. As an example of their astonishment, Paton reported that she had sat next to a San Francisco Welfare Department social worker, who throughout the presentation stoutly denied Schechter’s remarks and was overheard by Paton to mutter under her breath that he must be“finding only what he was looking for.”5 Initially, Paton viewed the paper in positive terms and was grateful to Schechter for supporting her position. She asserted, “A stone has been lifted; for no longer need I scream and point and insist and maintain to all who are in ear-shot, that this problem exists.”6 It was also transformative. The Schechter report, Paton stated, allowed her to resume the original plan for the Life History Study Center, which had been “long postponed” because of what she perceived as the crucial priority of the subject of illegitimacy. Now, however, that the professionals had“opened the Black Box of adoption,” Paton could do what she wanted to do from the beginning:“to help some of my people.”7 Paton cautioned her readers that now was not the time for complacency and equated the Life History Study Center’s new service activities as being on par with the nascent civil rights movement. “Just because we live in the midst of talk about human rights, and the emancipation of submerged populations, and the freedom of minority groups—do not be confident that the problems of adopted people are about to be solved. They are the final minority, the enduring colonials, the silent folk who...

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