Abstract

Suffer the Children

The article focuses on two books: Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed, by Stephen O'Connor and The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care, by Nina Bernstein. The mid-nineteenth century might seem an unlikely place to embark on an exploration of the failings of modern child welfare. But in Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed, Stephen O'Connor reveals the value of tracing a dysfunctional system back to its troubled origins. Many of the difficulties contemporary child-savers encounter in trying to solve them, are exemplified in the saga of Shirley Wilder and the lawsuit brought in her name, told in Nina Bernstein's The Last Children of Wilder.