Fostering on the Farm: Child Placement in the Rural Midwest by Megan Birk (review)

In Fostering on the Farm: Child Placement in the Rural Midwest, historian Megan Birk reconstructs the controversial and often wrenching process of dealing with society’s most vulnerable citizens in the post-Civil War era. During the 1860s and 1870s midwestern state governments established boards to regulate state and county institutions such as poor farms, asylums, orphanages, and prisons. Appalled by the conditions in many of these institutions, as well as the high cost of running them, reformers began systematically placing indigent children with farm families throughout the region. Fostering on the farm capitalized on deeply ingrained beliefs about the virtues of farm labor, the healthfulness of country living, and a firm conviction that farm families would treat unrelated children as their own. Reformers’ ideals varied widely and rarely squared with reality. The system was designed to assist individual children, but it did more to bring the conditions of poverty and child cruelty into the public eye. Birk carefully documents the broader social, economic, and political implications of individual experiences. Over time, child placement practices demanded the creation of extensive bureaucracies and by the early twentieth century, midwestern reformers emerged as national leaders in movements to address child welfare.

For the past two decades, the topic of child placement has been largely informed by the work of Marilyn Irvin Holt, Stephen O’Conner, and others who documented long-distance urban to rural migrations via orphan trains. Though valuable, such studies focus on a small number of eastern organizations, most notably the Children’s Aid Society of New York. In doing so, they reinforce conceptualizations of the Midwest as a region to be acted upon, as opposed to within. Though exhaustive research at the state and county levels, Birk presents a compelling case for the importance of grassroots studies in midwestern history. With the emergence of state boards came personnel to compile quantitative and qualitative data. By delving into broad source material, Birk demonstrates that the number of children brought to the Midwest on orphan trains paled in comparison to the number of midwestern children placed in institutional or foster care. Between 1850 and 1900, “one-fifth to one-third of farm homes contained children who were not the biological children of the adults in the home” (3). Not all of these children were placed from institutions, but the high number begs questions about the child welfare systems within local, county, and state contexts, as well as the complexities of midwestern family life, reform efforts, race relations, and community cohesion. Child placement was far from simple. As Birk notes in Chapter 2, the system had “no cohesive strategy for effectiveness,” with variations between states and even across counties (79). Those counties without institutions or systems created additional burdens for those that did, and while some believed institutions and placement systems to be necessary, critics charged that these systems encouraged negligent parents to abandon children to the county.

Caring for children was an expensive proposition for local governments, often requiring careful interactions between public institutions, private charities, and individual farm families. Even as they touted the benefits of country life for children, reformers enticed farm families with advertisements touting cheap labor. Many counties attempted to regulate the farm placement system by requiring farmers to sign contracts stipulating whether the family would receive compensation for the child’s care, whether the child would attend school, and compensation for child would upon reading the age of majority. This often included clothing, a Bible, and a small monetary payment that hardly reflected the work they contributed to the farm. Birk points out that most contracts stipulated children receive approximately $100 at the end of their indenture. Quite often, the children had worked for a decade or more to earn this amount at a time when farm hands earned an average of $16 per month. Otherwise, few counties or institutions had systematic methods for evaluating foster families, making home visits, or even simple record...