“C” is for Cornell and the Practice Babies..
In the early 1900’s to 1960’s women went to college to learn how to be homemakers. They were taught the most up-to-date scientific and cost-efficient home-economics. At Cornell they had Practice Apartments where eight women lived with a resident advisor each semester. In 1919 they started teaching childcare on real babies. Babies were leased from local orphanages for one to two years. Dicky “Domecon” was the first practice baby and stayed for two years.
In 1919, the first practice baby, named Dicky Domecon for “domestic economy,” came to Cornell. Cornell secured infants through area orphanages and child welfare associations. Babies were nurtured by the students according to strict schedules and guidelines, and after a year, they were available for adoption. Prospective adoptive parents in this era desired Domecon babies because they had been raised according to the most up-to-date scientific principles.
In 1952 Life Magazine featured the program at Cornell and speaks about Betty Ann Jacques who took care of 5 month old Denny “Domecon” for one week.
Lisa Grunwald wrote a novel titled “The irresistable Henry House” about one of the Domecon babies. An interview with the author about the book at CBS below discussing the life-long impact of multiple mothers had on the Domecon babies and how many babies were used this way.
The adopted ones blog 
Von
November 3, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Thanks for bringing this to light again, it’s an interesting story and reveals so much about the times and attitudes to adoption and adoptees.How often can you be a clean slate?
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The adopted ones
November 3, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Von, Thank you for reading as well as linking. I believe we have to understand the mistakes of the past to ensure they stay in the past and do not become the mistakes of the future. The abuse that has happened to children and the role adoption has played but be told and retold each successive generation.
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TAO
March 27, 2021 at 6:42 pm
https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/homeEc/9apartments/life.html
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TAO
March 27, 2021 at 6:44 pm
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/practice-babies-cornell-unveils-dark-history-adoption-world/story?id=12548705
“Jan. 7, 2010— — Denny Domecon had eight “mothers.” And every six weeks, eight more would take their place; planning his nutritious diet, his naps and tending to his every need.
The 4-month-old was a “practice baby” in 1952 at Cornell University’s home economics program in upstate Ithaca, N.Y., cared for by a group of “practice mothers” — young 22-year-old students — in a “practice apartment.”
Denny’s real identity was anonymous and, like so many other Domecon babies, his surname meant “domestic economy.”
He was one of hundreds of babies, mostly children of unwed mothers, who were on loan from orphanages to colleges like Cornell, University of Minnesota and Eastern Illinois State University and many others. There, students could practice the latest child-rearing theories of the day on a real newborn.
“It was a science,” said one of Denny’s mothers, Margaret Redmond, who is now 80 and living in Englewood, Fla. “That was the whole emphasis.”
After a year or two, the babies would leave their multiple mothers — in some programs up to 12 young women — to find homes in adoptive families.”
more to the story at the link above.
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