MANNERS & MORALS: Avoiding a Risk

MANNERS & MORALS

A childless couple, Charles E. Dameron and his wife Lona were delighted when in 1955 they were able to adopt an eight-month-old German orphan. Dori, a bright-eyed blonde, was duly examined by German authorities, found to be normal, was sent to live with the Damerons in their $19,000, three-bedroom home in suburban Silver Spring, Md. As Dori grew older, Dameron prepared her for a delightful surprise: she would soon, he told her one day, have a baby brother to play with.

Months before Dori joined the family, Dameron, a city fireman in nearby Washington, D.C., had applied for a boy from Maryland’s Montgomery County Social Service League. Then last week the Damerons themselves got a surprise. The agency’s answer was no. Reason: Dori, now 2½, has an exceptionally high IQ—147 (“very superior”); to bring a child of average mentality into the family, said the league, would cause hardship for Dori as well as for the baby, whose IQ might be lower.*

Charles Dameron protested. Replied the league’s executive secretary, Elizabeth O’Malley: “Dori is a very bright child who is going to make great demands on the Damerons in every way, financially and otherwise. It would not be fair to deprive her. We wouldn’t put a below-average child in the same home, and if we had another very bright child, we would place it in a home we considered had superior advantages.”

To Dameron, who describes himself as “a thrifty man,” the league’s reasoning seemed to hold that an exceptional child could get proper emotional and intellectual nourishment only from moneyed, more highly educated parents. (Dameron has acquired a year and a half of college credits going to school part-time.) Other local adoption agencies disputed Social Worker O’Malley’s financial point (Dori would obviously win a full scholarship), but they agreed that there are always problems arising from differences in the intelligence of children in the same family. Retorted Dameron: “If a couple had a very bright child by normal birth, does God then say. ‘Don’t have any more children’?” The league’s reply: “In adoption we’re just avoiding a risk that natural families have to take.”

At week’s end Charles Dameron, blocked from further action by the absence of legal appeal, turned to Dori, a perky little girl who can reel off her ABCs and the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, as well as the contents of all 30 of her children’s books. Said Dameron sadly: “Dori, the lady looked all around and couldn’t find a baby brother.”

* Genius rating: 150 and up.