ABSTRACT
Baby farms were singled out as particularly offensive and deadly institutions. Baby farming was denounced largely as a symbol of an antiquated and mercenary approach to adoption. Much as children’s life insurance, the system visibly challenged the new sacred value of children by routinely pricing their lives. In the 1870s, the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was also heavily involved in a struggle against the “padrone” system, a particularly mercenary type of indenture. Child welfare workers sought to replace mercenary foster parenting of any kind with a new approach to adoption more suitable for the economically “useless,” sacred child. Legal adoption, rare in the nineteenth century, became increasingly popular in the twentieth century. The sex and age preferences of twentieth-century adoptive parents were clearly linked to the cultural revolution in fostering.
