Half a Home Is Better than None

THE FAMILY

"She's mine," whispered Audrey Oliver, proudly cuddling the six-month-old infant in her arms. "I'm going to call her Candy." The scene was hardly surprising, since it took place in the reception room of the Children's Bureau in Indianapolis. What made it unusual was that the abandoned child was being adopted by a woman who, at 29, was and is unmarried.

Adoption by a single parent is a new trend growing out of the soaring illegitimacy rate. Adoption agencies, no longer able to be so choosy in selecting foster parents, have decided that half a home is better than none. This is especially true where the child is older or is of racially mixed parentage--situations in which adoptive couples are often impossible to come by. Explains Walter A. Heath, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Adoptions, which pioneered single adoption two years ago and has already placed 42 orphans: "They were all children for whom two parents just could not be found."

Spinster's Delight. By comparison with Los Angeles' record, the number of such placements across the U.S. is still small: there has been only one in Bridgeport, Conn., one in San Francisco, one in Washington, D.C., four in Minneapolis. New York City has none yet, but expects to place its first one by Christmas. One reason that so few singles have been tapped is that in screening unmarried applicants, agencies are especially cautious, weeding out anybody they suspect of wanting the child just as a cure for loneliness. In addition to the usual demands of reasonable income, steady job and emotional stability, caseworkers look for singles with "extended families" --people who live with, or at least close to, parents, brothers and sisters and other relatives. "We also like to see applicants demonstrate stubbornness, independence and personal confidence in the face of possible dissent over what they are doing," says Raymond Mondloh, casework director of the Children's Home Society in St. Paul.

Most single adoptive parents so far are women--either widows, divorcees or spinsters. And to a woman, they are enthusiastic about their experience. Dr. Mary B. Lane, professor of education at San Francisco State College and a childless widow of 56, now has a three-year-old son and a nine-month-old daughter. Says she: "I wish I had the resources to take a dozen." Women who have never married brush aside any implication that being a mother should cause comment. Chortles Louise Guenthner, 59, director of the Washington State Adoption Resources Exchange, who adopted an eleven-year-old Greek orphan and his nine-year-old sister: "It delights me when I am introduced as 'Miss Guenthner, an unmarried mother.' "

Bachelor Mothers. Even single men are now beginning to adopt children. Bachelor Tony Piazza, 41, a pianist from Portland, Ore., has two young sons, one of Italian-Spanish extraction, the other of Spanish-Mexican-Indian descent. "I don't think anybody lives a rich life unless he is capable of giving himself to others," explains Piazza, who cares not a whit that staying home with the children has limited his dating. "I'm doing the best job of being a mother you've ever seen--I'm proud of myself!" exclaims a 36-year-old Washington widower, whose adopted son is 2 1/2. Still, like other single parents of both sexes, he longs for someone with whom to share his joy. "You ache to turn to someone and say 'Did you hear him say that? Did you see him do this?" He too wants to marry again, but so strong have the bonds with his son already become that he says that he will do so "only if the girl is exactly right for us both."

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