Orphans

An orphan (from the Greek ορφανός) is a person (or animal), who has lost one or both parents often through death. One legal definition used in the USA is someone bereft through "death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, or separation or loss from, of both parents". Common usage limits the term to children, (or the young of animals) who have lost both parents. On this basis half-orphans are those with one surviving parent.

In certain animal species where the father typically abandons the mother and child at or prior to birth, the child will be called an orphan when the mother dies regardless of the condition of the father.

Many orphans are also foundlings, and many foundlings are effective orphans. Their search may include attempts to find their parents, or other relatives, and even if the parents are dead, the foundling orphan may learn who they were.

Societal treatment of orphaned children
Today, in the first world, most orphaned children are placed in foster care and then adopted with a permanent family as soon as possible.

In past times and in much of the third world, orphans often lived homeless as "street urchins", or were cared for in almshouses, orphanages, or occasionally monasteries; most modern people feel that this was a mistake, or, at the least, provided suboptimal care. In particular, almshouses were often shared with the adult homeless and the (sometimes dangerously) mentally ill in an age when many mental illnesses were untreated.

In some nations faced with war and AIDS, a significant proportion of the young population is orphaned, which is a major humanitarian crisis. In the People's Republic of China, infant daughters are sometimes abandoned due to the one child policy, which also creates a significant number of effective orphans.

Orphans typically suffer from adjustment problems related to identity.

Charities that help orphans
Prior to the establishment of state care for orphans in First World countries, many private charities existed to take care of destitute orphans.


 * SOS Children's Villages is the world's largest non-governmental, non-denominational child welfare organization. Its mission is to provide stable homes and loving families for orphaned and abandoned children around the world.


 * Dr Barnardo's Homes (now simply Barnardo's)


 * Identity Foundation provides education, medical aid and counseling to all deprived children in Pune, India. A lot of these children are orphans and runaways. Placement in shelters for orphans and runaways, reintegration of runaways with their family and identification of foster families willing to adopt/support children are activities carried out by the foundation.


 * Orphan Rights is dedicated to providing orphans with food, shelter, clothing, and parental care.


 * Brother Brother Sister Sister is a nonprofit organization founded in 2004 to help AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe, the Sub-Saharan African country where nearly 1 million children are orphans because their parents have died from AIDS.

Orphans in literature
Orphaned characters are extremely common as literary protagonists, especially in children's and fantasy literature. The lack of parents leaves the characters to pursue more interesting and adventurous lives, by freeing them from familial obligations and controls, and depriving them of more prosaic lives. It creates characters that are self-contained and introspective and who strive for affection. Orphans can metaphorically search for self-understanding through attempting to know their roots. Parents can also be allies and sources of aid for children, and removing the parents makes the character's difficulties more severe. Parents, furthermore, can be irrelevant to the theme a writer is trying to develop, and orphaning the character frees the writer from the necessity to depict such an irrelevant relationship; if one parent-child relationship is important, removing the other parent prevents complicating the necessary relationship. All these characteristics make orphans attractive characters for authors.

Frequently, orphans in literature work in factories, on the streets, like Oliver Twist, or at workhouses.

Over the last two hundred years, these literary and cinematic protagonists have been strong role models for children around the world. Creative cultural studies have examined the psychological impact of admiring such characters too strongly. A recent theory - "The Agency of the Orphan" - addresses this phenomenon as a possible behavioral condition.