Should society maintain orphanages?

Pro: Orphanages provide for the care and feeding of children in cases where no one else will. Thus, orphanages fight the evil effects of poverty. In orphanages, children are guaranteed a certain minimum standard of living—one that is well above the standard that many impoverished families are able to maintain for their children.

Pro: Orphanages provide children with safe, state-regulated environments—places where they can escape from parents who are physically or psychologically abusive.

Pro: Children benefit from having stable environments, and orphanages provide them for children.

Con: Acts of affection cannot be shown by workers to children in an orphanage. Thus children in such a setting could grow up with stunted emotional lives.

Con: Religious training cannot be given in public orphanages. The children raised there will lack that important dimension in their lives.

Reply: Orphanages supported and managed by religious organizations provide the wholesome environment and the dedicated instructors that inculcate intellectual and moral virtues in children to help them develop into well-adjusted, productive adults.

Con: Orphanages will cost the taxpayer millions of dollars, and that money could be better spent in other social programs.

Con: All the efforts of our society aimed at creating benefits for children should support the establishment and maintenance of strong nuclear families. The large amount of money that is required for the management of orphanages would be better spent in other ways to benefit children.

Reply: Running a small number of orphanages would provide services for the children who have the most extreme needs, needs that individual families and the society at large have been unable to meet.

Con: The existence of orphanages will discourage citizens from accepting their responsibility to care for and educate the young people who do not have families.

Pro: Orphanages help to reduce the amount of crime in society. By providing children and adolescents with supervision and support in a stable setting, they help to move the lives of young people in directions that benefit the society at large.