My last blogs have talked about adoption storylines in “Little House on the Prairie”, the 1970s TV series that still airs in reruns several times a day. You can access the first blog in the series by clicking here.
In season seven’s “Silent Cry”, a couple considers adopting two brothers, but they are concerned that the younger son’s refusal to speak means more than they can handle, so the orphanage agrees to allow only the older one to be adopted. The two boys run away to the School for the Blind which the Ingalls’ friends and family run. Their new allies are able to prevent the siblings’ separation.
(Unfortunately, there are many siblings separated by adoption today. Sometimes this is mutually beneficial, but often it is a trauma caused by simply not enough families who can or will take more than one child.)
Also in season seven is “Portrait of Love”, about 16-year-old Annie, a blind teenage artist who refuses to see her biological mother. She remembers her mother leaving her when she was a toddler and believes it is because she was going blind.
“She threw me away like I was a broken doll!” she says.
Still, the encounter troubles Annie so much that her adoptive mother, who originally had been afraid to have her daughter meet her biological mother, decides that she must engineer a reunion so her daughter can find peace. Indeed, there is a good reason why Annie’s birth mother couldn’t return for her. At the end Annie has warm relations with both of her mothers.
Season seven concludes with “The Lost Ones” (two episodes): James and Cassandra are orphaned by a wagon crash which Charles witnesses. He takes them to their uncle, who cannot care for them (he’s older, single, and lives in a mining camp). Charles is growing fond of the children, but knows he hasn’t room or money to take them himself. He takes them to an orphanage, but as Albert recalls orphanage life, Charles returns to get the children, figuring he can find them a family.
A farmer and his wife adopt the children in Walnut Grove. The wife has persuaded her husband to adopt a little girl to replace their daughter who died, and they are only taking the boy since they are brother and sister. The children must work so hard that they do poorly in school. The couple’s biological son steals and frames James. The two run away. Their new father refuses to look for them, saying he’s offered them a good home and if they don’t want it he won’t waste time hunting for them. Charles finds the two kids and the Ingalls family adopts them.
The storyline continues into Season Eight when James, believing the two of them are too much of a burden and the Ingallses should keep only his sister, runs away. Albert finds him, shares some of his own story before the Ingalls family adopted him, and persuades him to return home.
Also in season Eight, the elderly relative who declined to take the children before has come into some money and wants to see the children, and perhaps something more.
Please read these related blogs:
Book Review: The Orphan Train Children Series, Part One
The Story of the Orphan Trains
Older Child Adoption: Blessing or Nightmare?