Starting March 10, parents who rely on The Cradle’s infant nursery for care of their newborns coming from a hospital will visit those babies at the Maryville Crisis Nursery, 6650 W. Irving Park Road in Chicago. The current Cradle infant nursery, at 2049 Ridge Ave., will remain open until March 21. The Cradle is referring to the new nursery as “the Maryville nursery.”
Big changes, job losses
“We were real about the evolving needs of family, the changing landscape of adoption and what it was going to take to ensure that we can continue to provide high quality, ethical adoption services and other services to families for generations to come,” said Jason Friedman, president and CEO of The Cradle.
Jason Friedman in the family room at The Cradle. Behind him are photos of adopted children and families helped by the organization. Credit: Wendi Kromash
This arrangement with Maryville, the result of a year-long search by The Cradle’s board and senior executives, will save money without affecting the quality of care. Six full-time or near full-time employees and 24 part-time or flex staff employees will lose their jobs.
Some of these workers have been with The Cradle for 25 or 30 years. The Cradle is offering severance to those affected to ease the transition, and also encouraging those interested to apply to Maryville.
Extensive search for an organization with ‘four truths’
Friedman, himself an adoptive father, said that he and the board had extensive discussions about “what needed to be true” before they began their search. He and his wife were clients of The Cradle.
“First and foremost, any new arrangement needed to ensure that the babies were receiving high quality, ethical care. Number two, that under any new arrangement, parents and parents-to-be needed to be able to readily visit their babies,” he said. “The other two are a little bit more technical. One was sustainability as we thought about the next 100 years of The Cradle. And it needed to be compliant with DCFS [Illinois Department of Children & Family Services].”
Maryville is located just off the Kennedy Expressway and on a major bus route. It was important that The Cradle’s Chicagoland clients be able to get to Maryville easily.
Providing on-site care
During their search, Friedman and others spoke to executives at adoption agencies in Texas, New York, Maryland and Indiana. What they found is those agencies were all essentially licensing families to provide short-term foster care.
The Cradle’s model for nursery care looks quite different, where each shift has at least two nursery workers — a registered nurse and another employee, typically an infant aide. That takes place regardless of how many babies are in the nursery, and it’s constant: three shifts a day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
With Maryville, they found “a really viable choice,” according to Friedman. The Maryville nursery is “a bright, welcoming, well-appointed space. We could see early on how our babies could receive excellent care in that setting.”
“Maryville also showed a genuine openness to understanding who we are, what we believe, who we serve and what we think to be true for us to enter into this relationship,” said Friedman. This openness is critical because The Cradle has been a leader in African American infant adoption and LGBTQ+ placements for decades.
Same Cradle standards
Friedman described what will take place at Maryville.
“The best way to think about it is there will be a nursery within a nursery for Cradle babies. Because newborns are too young to be vaccinated, it is really important for them to have a dedicated space. So there’s a dedicated nursery room where Cradle babies with a dedicated Maryville staff member providing care to babies. And then in the event that we hit our cap in that room, we would then have a dedicated second group with another dedicated Maryville staff member.
Connie Herron, nursery director at The Cradle. Credit: The Cradle website
“Two other ways that care will be provided that are important, where there’s continuity from the way that we do things today, to the way things will happen in the future, is we are retaining our nursery director. Her name is Connie Herron, and Connie is going to do a few different things. She’s already started to provide training to Maryville staff members specific to newborn care in the context of adoption, something we know uniquely. Second is to accompany babies to their doctor’s appointments. And third is to serve as a medical liaison, and be that primary communicator and interpreter of medical information to all adults who need to know that information,” said Friedman.
Looking out for vulnerable parents and parents-to-be
This statue, commissioned in 2023 for The Cradle centennial, honors “the courageous parents who have faced the difficult decision of considering adoption for a child.” Carrie Fischer, an Illinois-based artist, designed it. Credit: Wendi Kromash
Maryville describes itself on its website as “a child care organization rooted in Catholic social teaching.” Friedman said he and Sister Cathy [Sister Catherine M. Ryan], the executive director of Maryville, met in person to get to know one another better.
In addition to Sister Cathy, conversations through the months also included two other members of Maryville leadership: Fred Smith, director of community services, and Tricia Fitzgerald, nursery director.
“So early on, we had direct, honest conversations with Maryville leadership about who The Cradle serves and what needed to be true in terms of how our clients would be welcomed into a space when they were taking this incredibly vulnerable step of visiting their child who they might be placing, or considering adopting a child and starting to form that connection. These are incredibly vulnerable moments. It was important to us that our clients, especially those from marginalized communities, would be welcomed when coming into this new space,” said Friedman.
“I walked away from those conversations feeling really confident that all of our clients, regardless of identity, family formation, who they loved, that they would be really welcomed.”
He and his team have had many long and heartfelt conversations with employees, parents, parents-to-be and others touched by the adoption experience as a result of this recent news.
“I think the team has done a great job setting aside the time answering people’s questions, and I’ve actually been really heartened by the responses,” said Friedman.
Declining birth and infant adoption rates
The Cradle is a resource for parents who need time after birth to figure out what the best option is for their particular situation. Some birth parents take their child home. Some choose adoption.
The Cradle’s infant nursery has a license to care for 12 babies. “It’s been a while” since that many babies were there, according to Friedman. On the day the RoundTable visited, there was one infant in the nursery. Empty spaces stood where there were formerly cribs and rockers.
The nursery at The Cradle. Credit: Wendi Kromash
There are fewer babies in part because of declining birth rates, declining infant adoption rates and less societal stigma related to unwed parenting.
The United States’ birth rates have dropped significantly since 1950, according to data compiled by the United Nations. In 1950, the live birth rate per 1,000 people was 24.268. In 2025, the rate was 11.994.
There are also fewer infants available for adoptions. The National Council for Adoption released a report in December 2022 showing that domestic infant adoption comprises about 0.5% of all live births in the United States and only 1% of births to single parents. In total, it’s fewer than 20,000 infants.
Today, sending unwed mothers away to have their babies in secret and give them up for adoption is much less common because there’s less social stigma.
What’s next
The staff at The Cradle provides and will continue to provide adoption services to families throughout Chicagoland.
As for the future, Friedman was emphatic that The Cradle’s leadership role in the Illinois adoptive community will not change.
As the agency evolves, there may be new developments. “The Cradle takes great pride in how we educate prospective adoptive parents to be the great parents that they aspire to be, which all parents aspire to be,” he said, “and we think that we have a track record and scope in this area that with some adjustments, we could bring to support the broader parental community.”
Friedman said he’ll have more information about this in the spring. Stay tuned.
