This is a story of some of Iowa's orphans - then and now. For the tiny, abandoned children of the 1930's, the story has a miraculous, happy ending. The ending is tragic for the orphans of today, most especially Samantha, who took her own life in silence in March 1999. She was 17 years old. 

Samantha shared something very special with the orphans that preceded her; the ending of her story differs only because of the way her state judges the parenting abilities of people with mental disorders.

In the 1930's, two psychologists in an Iowa institution decided to try to do something about their sad, hapless clients. H. H. Skeels and H. B. Dye began to doubt that the orphan's mental retardation was biologically inherited, as the experts believed back then (1939). They considered the possibility that the children's lack of mental and emotional development came as the result of them being institutionalized and deprived of bonding with their mothers. Anxious to test their radical hypothesis, they transferred 13 of the most seriously retarded infants to Glenwood State School, an institution for adult mentally retarded patients aged 18-50 years old, with a mental age range of from 5 to 12 (Henslin, 1995). Each infant, who averaged 19 months old, was assigned to a ward of women. The adult patients took care of the infants in every way from changing diapers to hugging and talking to them. Each infant became attached to a particular individual, who performed all of the roles expected of a mother (Skeels 1966).

The powers to be would have assumed that the 12 retarded infants of slightly higher intelligence left at the orphanage as a control group would have fared considerably better than the 13 orphans being mothered by women with mental ages from 5 - 12. Afterall, the orphanage was considered a "good one" with highly trained staff (Henslin, 1995).

Time would tell.

But we cannot linger in the past without considering what happened to Samantha in the 1980's. It was then that Samantha became an orphan. All of Iowa must find it in their hearts to remember Samantha and her siblings, who were torn away from their mother by governmental bureaucrats. You see, administrators for the Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) decided that there was something wrong with Samantha's mother.

Samantha's mom was mentally challenged.

DHS took Samantha her four brothers and sisters from their mom and the only home they had ever known. The children were placed in foster care. The foster parents attempted to adopt Samantha and her siblings but their efforts failed. Then DHS came out to yet again yank the children out of the second home they had grown to know. Samantha and her brothers and her sisters didn't want to go. They cried. DHS took the orphans of the living anyway; placing them in yet another foster home (Clayworth 1999).

Time ticked away for the orphans of the living.

Five decades earlier, two psychologists who had a controversial idea about tiny orphans and moms and mental retardation returned to the mental institution where they had left 13 infants with mentally retarded adults 2 ½ years earlier. Skeels and Dye tested the intelligence of the 13 orphans raised at Glenwood and the dozen infants left back at the orphanage as a control group (Heslin 1995). The scientists were astounded. The IQs of the infants who had been cared for by mentally retarded women had rose a whopping twenty-eight points while the IQs of the control group at the orphanage had dropped thirty points!

The scientists had made an incredible discovery! They must have immediately surmised that their findings would be adopted by a state eager to help the orphans it had institutionalized. The evidence was clear that the presence of a mother figure - even a mentally retarded adult with a mental maturity of 5 years old - made one heck of a difference. More than anything else, the evidence clearly showed the debilitating effects of raising children without moms in institutions.

And, of course, Iowa learned in the 1930's that mentally challenged adults made pretty good moms.

Or did they?

In the 1980's, DHS filed a petition to terminate the parental rights of one Karen Cooper. Karen Cooper was Samantha's mom. Karen Cooper, DHS said in its petition, was mentally challenged. The court granted the petition. Samantha and her four brothers and sisters were forever severed from their mother.

The children objected. The children cried. It did not matter. No one heard them.

Ignored as well were the foster parents who had provided Samantha and her siblings their second home. They had tried to adopt the children. The children cried and said they didn't want to leave when DHS came to take them away from the foster parents. 

DHS didn't listen.

In a decision that would cause heated controversy and public criticisms of the judge and DHS, an Iowa court allowed Karen Cooper's brother to adopt the orphans of the living.

The story became national news and even the subject of a movie (Clayworth 1999).

And what of the orphans who were raised by mentally challenged people of days past? Well, in 1960, some twenty-one years after they had tested their novel idea about orphans and moms, Skeels and Dye did a follow up study. Averaging 12 grades of education, all of children raised by mental patients were independent members of society. All but two had married. Five went to college and one went on to graduate school. They were all self-supporting.

Twenty-one years later, the children who were left in the orphanage (the control group) averaged less than a third grade education as adults. Iowa still housed four of them in one institution or another and only two had gotten married. Those who were out among society were holding down low-level jobs.

In 2000, Iowa still seems to feel that the state can do a better job of raising children than their parents. DHS maintains institutions throughout the state to incarcerate orphans of the living. They have changed the name of these institutions; they are now called "group homes." But the agony the tiny residents suffer continues. The waste of human potential continues.

Hundreds of children are taken from their homes each year in Iowa and placed in state custody. Sometimes the action is unavoidable because the children's natural parents have severely abused them. In the vast majority of the cases, DHS simply alleges that the parent, more often than not a single mom, is not quite worthy. DHS cites a character defect or a "personality disorder" diagnosed by a therapist it pays to evaluate the parent. Some parents are even labeled "mentally challenged."

The story ends happily for those orphans reared in Iowa by mentally retarded surrogates in 1939. The ending is a sad one for Iowa's orphans of the living, who will never see their slightly flawed parents again.

How will today's orphans of the living fare when they "age out of the system?" 

Samantha was unavailable for comment.