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Child who has lost their parents From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An orphan (from the Greek: ορφανός, romanized: orphanós)[1] is a child whose parents have died, are unknown or have permanently abandoned them. It can also refer to a child who has lost only one parent, as the Hebrew translation, for example, is "fatherless".[2][3]
In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents due to death is called an orphan. When referring to animals, only the mother's condition is usually relevant (i.e., if the female parent has gone, the offspring is an orphan, regardless of the father's condition).[4]
Various groups use different definitions to identify orphans. One legal definition used in the United States is a minor bereft through "death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, or separation or loss from, both parents".[5]
In everyday use, an orphan does not have any surviving parent to care for them. However, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), and other groups label any child who has lost one parent as an orphan. In this approach, a maternal orphan is a child whose mother has died, a paternal orphan is a child whose father has died, and a double orphan is a child/teen/infant who has lost both parents.[6] This contrasts with the older use of half-orphan to describe children who had lost only one parent.[7]
Orphans are relatively rare in developed countries because most children can expect both of their parents to survive their childhood. Much higher numbers of orphans exist in war-torn nations such as Afghanistan.
Continent | Number of orphans (1000s) |
Orphans as percentage of all children |
---|---|---|
Africa | 34,294 | 11.9% |
Asia | 65,504 | 6.5% |
Latin America & Caribbean | 8,166 | 7.4% |
Total | 107,964 | 7.6% |
Year | Country | Orphans as % of all children | AIDS orphans as % of orphans | Total orphans | Total orphans (AIDS related) | Maternal (total) | Maternal (AIDS related) | Paternal (total) | Paternal (AIDS related) | Double (total) | Double (AIDS related) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1990 | Botswana | 5.9 | 3.0 | 34,000 | 1,000 | 14,000 | < 100 | 23,000 | 1,000 | 2,000 | < 100 |
Lesotho | 10.6 | 2.9 | 73,000 | < 100 | 31,000 | < 100 | 49,000 | < 100 | 8,000 | < 100 | |
Malawi | 11.8 | 5.7 | 524,000 | 30,000 | 233,000 | 11,000 | 346,000 | 23,000 | 55,000 | 6,000 | |
Uganda | 12.2 | 17.4 | 1,015,000 | 177,000 | 437,000 | 72,000 | 700,000 | 138,000 | 122,000 | 44,000 | |
1995 | Botswana | 8.3 | 33.7 | 55,000 | 18,000 | 19,000 | 7,000 | 37,000 | 13,000 | 5,000 | 3,000 |
Lesotho | 10.3 | 5.5 | 77,000 | 4,000 | 31,000 | 1,000 | 52,000 | 4,000 | 7,000 | 1,000 | |
Malawi | 14.2 | 24.6 | 664,000 | 163,000 | 305,000 | 78,000 | 442,000 | 115,000 | 83,000 | 41,000 | |
Uganda | 14.9 | 42.4 | 1,456,000 | 617,000 | 720,000 | 341,000 | 1,019,000 | 450,000 | 282,000 | 211,000 | |
2001 | Botswana | 15.1 | 70.5 | 98,000 | 69,000 | 69,000 | 58,000 | 91,000 | 69,000 | 62,000 | 61,000 |
Lesotho | 17.0 | 53.5 | 137,000 | 73,000 | 66,000 | 38,000 | 108,000 | 63,000 | 37,000 | 32,000 | |
Malawi | 17.5 | 49.9 | 937,000 | 468,000 | 506,000 | 282,000 | 624,000 | 315,000 | 194,000 | 159,000 | |
Uganda | 14.6 | 51.1 | 1,731,000 | 884,000 | 902,000 | 517,000 | 1,144,000 | 581,000 | 315,000 | 257,000 |
Famous orphans include world leaders such as Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, and Pedro II of Brazil; writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Leo Tolstoy; and athletes such as Aaron Hernandez. The American orphan Henry Darger portrayed the horrible conditions of his orphanage in his artwork. Other notable orphans include entertainment greats such as Louis Armstrong, Marilyn Monroe, Babe Ruth, Ray Charles and Frances McDormand, and innumerable fictional characters in literature and comics.
Wars, epidemics (such as AIDS), pandemics, and poverty[15] have led to many children becoming orphans. The Second World War (1939-1945), with its massive numbers of deaths and vast population movements, left large numbers of orphans in many countries—with estimates for Europe ranging from 1,000,000 to 13,000,000. Judt (2006) estimates there were 9,000 orphaned children in Czechoslovakia, 60,000 in the Netherlands 300,000 in Poland and 200,000 in Yugoslavia, plus many more in the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, China and elsewhere.[16]
Orphaned characters are prevalent as literary protagonists, especially in children's and fantasy literature.[17] The lack of parents leaves the characters to pursue more exciting 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 by 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 depicting 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.
Orphans are common in fairy tales, such as most variants of Cinderella.
Several well-known authors have written books featuring orphans. Examples from classic literature include Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
More recent authors featuring orphan characters include A. J. Cronin, Lemony Snicket, A. F. Coniglio, Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling. One recurring storyline has been the relationship that the orphan can have with an adult from outside their immediate family, as seen in Lyle Kessler's play Orphans.
Orphans are especially common as characters in comic books. Many popular heroes are orphans, including Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Robin, The Flash, Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Green Arrow. Orphans are also very common among villains: Bane, Catwoman, and Magneto are examples. Lex Luthor, Deadpool, and Carnage can also be included on this list, though they killed one or both of their parents. Supporting characters befriended by the heroes are also often orphans, including the Newsboy Legion and Rick Jones.
Other famous fictional orphans include Little Orphan Annie, Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker and his sister, Leia Organa, and several main characters in children's shows like Diff'rent Strokes and Punky Brewster.
Many religious texts, including the Bible and the Quran, contain the idea that helping and defending orphans is a fundamental and God-pleasing matter. The religious leaders Moses and Muhammad were orphaned as children. Several scriptural citations describe how orphans should be treated:
Bible
Qu'ran