Yet it seems that the loving heart is the one possession which the social worker is taught to avoid as the disqualifying possession for a professional. Social workers must be “detached.” And this is the basic stupidity, for how can one have the right to care for children and place their destinies if one is “detached?” I understand very well what is meant by the term. Emotional clinging to a child is, we are told, the great sin. The social worker must act like God, who pours down rain upon the just and the unjust with equal indifference. A child must therefore simply be a case, “a referral,” if you please, and it is very important to have just the right terminology, if you are a social worker, so that other social workers will know that you belong to the gang. The profession is becoming a hiding place for small people, too timid to break petty rules and come out for the great principles of child life. And the greatest of these and the first commandment is love. Everybody who comes near a child or who influences the life of a child in any way, must be capable of love, a love so generous that every child is dear, and every child is a valuable treasure. I have known social workers by the score, and once in a while I do meet one who is right, a warmhearted, generous, loving woman — always a woman, so far — and always one who has known great personal love, given and returned. When I find this one, I sit down and we talk, and she tells me what she thinks and I tell her what I think, and what we think is the same. It is my considered opinion that the whole profession of social workers needs cleaning out, and a new start made. And as I write these words my conscience smites me, for I know a social worker who is sent from heaven in mercy to lost children, and I have the joy of working with her in Welcome House. She is no longer young, and though she has been to schools of social work and knows the rules and laws and jargon, she has forgotten all except the understanding of a little child and what sort of parents he needs, and she has a heart of love and a mind of wisdom, and with these sacred lamps, she searches and finds the parents for the child, and the child for the parents. She is the blessed exception to every rule, and because of her I know there must be many like her, working quietly and doggedly and devotedly in far more places than I know.
I do not say that social workers as a profession are insincere or wilfully cruel or even selfish — not that at all. On the contrary, they are for the most part too conscientious, too careful, too critical — and too self-conscious. They are perfectionists in a far from perfect situation. They complain because doctors and friends and relatives place children for adoption, they give instances, true, I am sure, of misplacements, but they ignore the damage their own failure to solve the problem does to the waiting child, or the “unadoptable” child. I believe there is no unadoptable child. There are always parents to be found for every child. People need education to help them to accept the so-called “unadoptable” child, but there are always people to be educated, although not all people can be educated, but as it is now, again the child is the one punished for parental unreadiness. Sometimes I have even found in professional social workers a strange hostility toward the adoptive parents. I doubt they know it, but some of them do have it, and the adoptive parents feel it, even when they are approved. It may be the unconscious jealousy of a lonely woman who can never have a child. I have also seen the same strange jealousy in men social workers who are homosexual. Certainly they would deny it, the more hotly if they have it, and will not recognize it.
The social worker has, indeed, a power over human lives which demands a largeness seldom found. She — or he — sits in judgment upon two people, weighing them, examining them, peering into their private lives, and it is this social worker who decides whether or not they shall have a baby. Even God has not such power. Any man and woman who come together, whether they are fit parents or not, may bring a child to life. The child comes according to the law of nature, and if detachment is wanted, here it is. No questions asked, but if healthy people copulate, they have children. But the couple, denied children and wanting a baby more than all else, who submit to the perfectionist’s process, are frightened to offend the almighty lest they be refused the joy they long for and to which they are usually entitled.
It will be seen by now that I am angry. I acknowledge it. I have seen too much. I have gone too deep. And I find that it is harder to adopt a child nowadays, thanks to the development of the profession of social work, than it was twenty-eight years ago, when I found my little daughter, or eighteen years ago when our blessed Big Four came home. And I doubt that my husband and I would have passed at all nowadays, as adoptive parents, and certainly we would not have been given more than one child. Yes, the professional gods actually parcel out the children, saying that it is not “fair” for one family to have two children when others have none. What validity the argument might have is destroyed when one visits the orphanages. One such orphanage I know has exactly three hundred children.
“Why exactly three hundred?” I inquired of my guide.
“We are required to have a minimum of three hundred in order to receive our full quota of funds,” she replied honestly but without understanding the frightful import of her words.
And I remember the day when a little timid woman, herself a social worker, stole into my office in New York City. She had come from another state to tell me that something had to be done for the children there, because twenty-seven children in an institution or in boarding homes constituted a job and salary for a social worker, and therefore too many of these workers did not want to free the children for adoption, since it meant finding other children to replace the ones adopted.
“I keep seeing their little faces,” she said. “Please, can’t you do something?”
I could not. The mountain I could not move, for in that state it was imbedded in the corruptions of political life. And so I am glad we began our family before the latter-day social workers had a chance at us, for we have had a glorious life with our children, making plenty of mistakes with them, I am sure, and losing patience on a grand scale occasionally, and they with us, but we have had a glorious time nevertheless, and thank God for every minute of it.
We need social workers, if by that we mean persons devoted to the happiness of children. In a society like ours, where children can be easily lost and ill-treated, there must be organized care for them. But the organization must be watched and criticized continually and rebelled against individually and collectively by those concerned and by the lay public, or else the organization becomes a vested interest. And when children are property, then we have slavery as real as anywhere in the world. The lay mind must always remain in control of the professional, exactly as the civilian mind must remain in control of the military, for once the organization takes over, danger looms. The professional is the specialist, employed to advise and to perform but always under the supervision of the lay mind, for the specialist is too narrow, and made so by his education, to be also the administrator. This is the basic principle upon which alone the citizens of a democracy are safe. For the curse of the professional in any walk of life is his perfectionism. It is all very well to want to be perfect but such heights are achieved only after due process, and the purpose fails if there is such delay that people grow impatient. I read much of the black market in babies, and certainly I do not approve it, but I know the black market in any commodity exists and flourishes only when the proper sources of supply are inadequate for the demand. It is ideal to complete a perfect adoption, taking time to prepare both child and parents, so that one child has a good home and every chance for happiness. But what of all the other children growing too old in the boarding home or orphanage while the one is being perfectly placed, so that many lost children never find adoption?