The three brothers were born to a teenaged single mother on July 12, 1961. They were actually quadruplets; the fourth brother died at birth, although this information reported by UPI was not included in the film.[8] At the direction of psychiatrists Peter B. Neubauer and Viola W. Bernard, under the auspices of the Jewish Board of Guardians and the prestigious Louise Wise adoption agency, the three infants were intentionally placed with families having different parenting styles and economic levels – one blue-collar, one middle-class, and one affluent – who had each adopted a baby girl through the same agency two years earlier.