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Black children are twice as likely to enter U.S. foster care than white children. The culprit: Our inattention to poverty.
When a recurrent plumbing problem in an upstairs unit caused raw sewage to seep into her New York City apartment, 22-year-old Lisa called social services for help. She had repeatedly asked her landlord to fix the problem, but he had been unresponsive. Now the smell was unbearable, and Lisa feared for the health and safety of her two young children.
When the caseworker arrived, she observed that the apartment had no lights and that food was spoiling in the refrigerator. Lisa explained that she did not have the money to pay her electric bill that month, but would have the money in a few weeks. She asked whether the caseworker could help get them into a family shelter. The caseworker promised she would help -- but left Lisa in the apartment and took the children, who were then placed in foster care.
Months later, the apartment is cleaned up. Lisa still does not have her children.
It is probably fair to say that most women with children worry about their ability as mothers. Are they spending enough time with them? Are they disciplining them correctly? Are they feeding them properly? When should they take them to the doctor, and when is something not that serious? But one thing most women in the United States do not worry about is the possibility of the state removing children from their care. For a sizable subset of women, though -- especially poor black mothers such as Lisa -- that possibility is very real.
Black children are the most overrepresented demographic in foster care nationwide. According to the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO), blacks make up 34 percent of the foster-care population, but only 15 percent of the general child population. In 2004, black children were twice as likely to enter foster care as white children. Even among other minority groups, black mothers are more likely to lose their children to the state than Hispanics or Asians-groups that are slightly underrepresented in foster care.
The reason for this disparity? Study after study reviewed by Stanford University law professor Dorothy Roberts in her book Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books/Perseus, 2002) concludes that poverty is the leading cause of children landing in foster care. One study, for example, showed that poor families are up to 22 times more likely to be involved in the child-welfare system than wealthier families. And nationwide, blacks are four times more likely than other groups to live in poverty.
But when state child-welfare workers come to remove children from black mothers' homes, they rarely cite poverty as the factor putting a child at risk. Instead, these mothers are told that they neglected their children by failing to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, education or medical care. The failure is always personal, and these mothers and children are almost always made to suffer individually for the consequences of one of the United States' most pressing social problems.
The legal system often provides no haven for these parents. Based on even the flimsiest allegations, they are essentially presumed guilty and pressured to participate in various cookie-cutter services that often do not directly address the concerns that brought them to court. For example, after her children went into foster care, Lisa was asked to attend parenting classes, undergo a mental health evaluation, seek therapy and submit to random drug testing before her children could be returned. But child-welfare authorities did not assist her in repairing her home or finding a new apartment, nor have they gone after her landlord for allowing deplorable conditions.
Race and poverty should not be a barrier to raising one's children. But in order to prevent the entry of poor children into the foster care system, state and federal government must confront poverty-related issues. Until this country comes to terms with its culpability in allowing widespread poverty to exist, poor black mothers will continue to lose their children to the state. And we will continue to label these women "bad mothers" to assuage our own guilt.
Gaylynn Burroughs is a staff attorney at the Bronx Defenders in New York City. She works in the family defense practice, where she represents parents accused of child neglect.
(The full text of this article appears in the Spring issue of Ms. magazine, available on newsstands and by subscription from store.msmagazine.com)
Copyright © Ms. Magazine 2008
75 Comments so far
Show AllJust an aside about the percentage of African Americans in public housing -
The GI bill after WW II was a critical factor in enforcing economic inequality between the races in the 20th century. All GI's were theoretically entitled to low cost mortgages and college education. In reality the mortgages were administered by local governments and very very few black GI's got this break. At the same time the GI Bill provided first time home ownership for hundreds of thousands of white soldiers. Similarly, there was still segregation in many colleges and also job discrimination, which meant that those benefits were distributed disproportionately to white veterans.
In the end, the prosperity trifecta, a home, (which is the main source net worth for US families) a higher education and a good job were denied to that whole generation of African American men who had served just like whites. At the same time many white families got these breaks. Thus the inequality was emphasized.
Need I say that poverty breeds poverty. The little bit of help that white GIs got broke the cycle for depression-era immigrants and other whites. There has never been a comparable meaningful re-distribution of national wealth for African Americans, despite the fact that they worked for several centuries for no pay and made possible the "gracious" plantation mansions of the south.
So - does it surprise anyone that there would be proportionally more African Americans living in the splendor of public housing apartments?
I would like to remember where I read about the mortgages. It may have been in a book called "When Affirmative Action Was White".
LA Times May 11, 2008
COMPENSATION Study pegs moms' pay at $117,000
If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she'd rake in nearly $117,000 a year.
That's according to a study by Salary.com, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm that studies workplace compensation.
The eighth annual survey calculated a mom's market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties performed by typical mothers, including housekeeper, teacher, psychologist and chief executive.
This year, the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, and a mom who juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.
The biggest driver of a mother's theoretical salary is the overtime pay she would receive.
The 18,000 mothers surveyed about their typical week reported working 94.4 hours -- meaning they'd be spending more than half their working hours on overtime.
Mothers who work outside the home reported an average 54.6-hour "mom workweek" besides the hours they spent at paying jobs.
Atheist ~ What is our Gov't doing by providing tax funded $ per child produced then? Like it or not, they (we actually) are currently in the business of producing poverty-striken children!
I agree with your statement, "If you can't afford to raise a kid, don't get pregnant!", but where's the compassion for the poor?
You can't have it both ways; by saying that you "care" for the impoverished and incentivize the continual birthing of subsidized babies!! It seems to my sensibilities that all we're doing is purposefully constructing a dependant class of people.
Where's the middle ground here? If it's there,I'm not seeing it!
"Poverty SHOULD be a barrier ! If you can't afford to raise a kid, don't get pregnant ! It's not that difficult !"
....and if you have kids, don't get sick, don't let your corp. ship your job oversees, cut your hours, lay you offforcing you to take a minimum wage job because the economy is so flipping bad, at least it's something. In other words, if you have kids you have a responsibility to NOT become poor, and don't be having any disabled children that will drain your resources, really folks it's not that difficult !
Poverty SHOULD be a barrier ! If you can't afford to raise a kid, don't get pregnant ! It's not that difficult !
I have little sympathy for poor people who repeatedly squirt out babies and then expect the rest of us to support them.
Btw, it would be nice to say that race isn't a factor, but I live in Chicago and even though blacks are a minority here, they make up something like 90% of the public housing residents. Why ?
The most important rule under Malthus is that the hundred brown people that supports each English gentleman never see how he lives.
A friend went to north Vietnam every year from 1970 till the 1990s, they thought the whole world counted rise out each meal....
If you had to see RichWhiteFoak every night you would need "drugs" too..
Lizzard,
You object to coercion? How do you think you will be able to sell any child support improvement package to a legislature in the US without it?
If we lived in a utopia, that would be wonderful but the truth is we live in a country that begrudges the poor health care and food!
Remember this is the country that meekly sat back and accepted benchmarks for our schools. Isn't that what is the basis for the No Child Educated Ever program pushed thru by Bush early on?
So yes, my proposal included 'benchmarks' in hopes it would be more palatable to some of the tightwads [and asses] running this country.
When you can think of a better way to push true reforms through our antediluvian Neanderthal legislatures, let me know. In the meantime, I will try to do what I can here in the world as it exists.
"Personal responsibility" means, I guess, that the poor should not have children. Are we saying, then, that the vast majority of people on earth should not have children? Sure looks like the solution, doesn't it?
And I think that laying it out like that, in a flash, directly answers why it is NOT the solution.
To dictate to anyone that they should put off (indefinitely or forever) having love and life until they've "earned" it, is probably one of the most brazen forms of elitism, ignorance and arrogance that I can imagine.
Let's live in the Real World, OK?
I am coming late to this discussion and this author writes from her knowledge of the NY state welfare system. I am in a very different state.
I agree that a lack of social supports are making it very hard for poor folks to parent. The fact that a parent can only get medicaid for so many years, the fact that food stamps are harder to qualify for and given in smaller amounts, the failure to address the need for good daycare that pays the day care provider decently so that parents can seek education and employment, easily accessed health care and contraceptive care--many many things. Some of the saddest children are those of chronically mentally ill parents. They become care providers to their parents at shockingly young ages. Parents love their children, children love their parents but it is a toxic mess for all.
But in my state the local SRS agency has many incentives to not admit children in to foster care. The workers sometimes just don't look too closely because the goal is to not use resources. Supports like parenting classes to parent incredibly demanding or difficult children are offered as optional. Not too much follow-up--don't look too close. The case has to be closed in 90 days.
This results in a culture of "ignore the situation until it becomes a frigging disaster".
We always know that when a kid gets removed something REALLY BAD happened because you cannot get SRS over much interested until something REALLY BAD happens. As I say, they prefer the smoking iron silhouette mark in the middle of the kid's back.
No situation creates a need for foster care more often than alcohol/chemical abuse. Meth can take a fairly decent person and render them oblivous to the needs of their children and dangerous to their children. You can rant about the "evils" of foster care but it is a need and since Mother Teresa is gone, people would like money to support the child with and they need some cash to cover their time. Don't you think your time is worth something? There are, to be sure, people in foster care for the money. There are people who work in the prison system for the money and the chance to be the person in charge over "bad people". But many of the foster care providers I meet are imperfect people trying their best at a hard job in a system that will eat you up and spit you out fast if you're any good at your job. How many of us could be compassionate with a little child who experiences periodica "rages" 24/7? One foster mom told me that most kids are food hoarders on arrival to her house; that is they stash food in their bedroom. Imagine why they would have developed that habit? These are kids who have fears, psychopathologies, unanswered health problems. They're more than a handful.
Yes, I think poor people need better supports and better economic opportunities. Addicted people need treatment. Chronically mentally ill folks need treatment and even more supports. Do ALL of that and you will have a lesser need for foster care but you will not obliterate it.
Hugh Masakala sang the Train Song for 40 years, the train that kept the fathers away from their families for over eleven months of every year, for most of the last century in South Africa. Often their towns were destroyed while the fathers were "employed" in the Corporation's mines.
When fathers are present in the home, the $price that must be paid for living day to day doubles and triples here in South Central; rent doubles without "Section Eight", Medical care moves from emergency only into none available, and DCS will force the kids into adoption if "shots" and AMA type "Doctors appointments" are missed. Mothers are measured by AMA Psychiatric rules.
I ran 14 Census takers out of this house in 2000, they all came back with the same comment: no one makes any money.
Why... all "wages" are off-the-books, every employer is a "criminal" tax evader, 40 percent of black males are in the "justice system" for one or more of the thousand new laws invented each year by the State. We are under a "Gang Injunction" here, a dress code, curfew, no groups of three or more males in public, pushing the poor out of this area for the realtors and forcing black wages down below immigrant wages.
This California economy (as large as China in 2003) runs with scofflaw laborers who get no EPA in the workplace and will never collect their retirement. Piecework: in 2006, tomato pickers just got their first wage increase since 1977!!!. We choped off your hand..we lost your paycheck.. go back to Mexico wetback...
This is why our oligarchy supports the lie of a second class of Americans: "illegals".
Home mortgages are advertised here- "no Social Security Number required".
25 percent of the drivers in California don't buy car insurance, another class of criminals.
Or a law making the poor protect the rich.
My "new" car cost me $200 plus gasoline for all of this last year. I am a criminal.
"Still nothing on where the fathers are?"
In jail working for our Swartznazi Governor.
Stop your ignoring, stop choosing the verb ignor-ance, jakenewton. You've been Colonialized into blindness.
Still nothing on where the fathers are?
dfabian0 May 13th, and
jclientelle May 13th.
Thankyou. You speak the facts.
Mining down through CD is really accelerating my education, which only started when i got time to read, by closing my one-man Hollywood film studio (see Conan, Gostbusters, Tron, E.S.Back, et. al.) and becoming homeless for more than ten years; dumpster diving only behind health food stores...
The next real solution here is to implement the work of Henry George and forget Karl Marx.
Now i must get back to keeping other peoples kids in school....
Hitler's mentor Father Sierra invented the turnstile and zoning laws to separate family's from their work, sending people "home" with a small fraction of what was theirs.
King Bush the first spent Federal $millions "unifying" the teaching of history in the US.
Anyone ever hear of Henry George or read between the lines of "The Devil And Danial Webster"...no, but we were all required to give up our hopes after reading "Great Expectations".
The great majority of people on welfare are white.
That said, I do think contraception is called for, although not mandatory. Readily available contraception and sex education would probably go a long way toward people not having children they can't take care of.
skippyagogo41 May 12th, 2008 1:28 pm
Am I too cynical????
I hope so!
elmysterio May 12th, 2008 7:17 pm
Americans don't like to share? Americans are the most generous people ever on earth by any measure you care to use.....except millionaires, most of them are not.
xntrk May 12th, 2008 9:40 pm
Thanks, I'll check out the Public Housing reform and thats an excellet point about lowering help to the poverty level. It would have an effect on more than housing of course.
denny May 13th, 2008 12:01 am
You do have a bleak outlook don't you? Please lay off the Southern stereotypes and I won't use Northern, Eastern, Western or costal ones.
"People who marry, work and do all the "right things" still need help from time to time. Our approach to helping families requires that first they prove total impoverishment through some degradation ceremonies. (Same goes for disabled people). The poverty level is set so unrealistically low that people who make a good effort to support themselves disqualify themselves for help."
Excellent point. Excellent!
Recycle1 May 13th, 2008 9:39 am
We shouldn't be punishing the child for what society has wrought
I would suggest to you its not society thats wrought most of these problems, its the parents.
While the rich get richer in the US and the poor get poorer, people are still worried that those on welfare may be getting a free ride. Pathetic. "If they pass benchmarks we can help them." How does the developed world manage these problems without being so coercive? Find out for heaven's sake. Get health care for everybody or just shut up. That is how a civilized rich people are supposed to act nowadays. But no, instead, the government advocates sexual abstinence and creationism is gaining ground. The people are relatively uneducated and unintelligent, there is no free medical care, the unemployment program is inadequate as is the welfare program in most states. The whole country is a disgrace. The others manage, why not us? We all want still lower taxes don't we? We aren't gpoing to be like Sweden or Finland or France are we? No, of course not, it is so much better to do it the American way. Isn't it?
Hellodarling: Before suggesting compulsory anything try something else. Haven't you had enough coercion with Iraq and all? Is there nothing that comes to your mind other than coercion? Try free medical care and contraception. Or at least free contraceptive pills. Sound too radical? You sounded awful but I guess its that ol' American reflex: use force!
My mom was responsible for the budget of 150 families. She quit after 3 years and said it was the worst job she had ever had in her life. She also said that most of the people that worked there were prejudiced and actually denied benefits for less than honest reasons and routinely with held benefit information to desperate people.
My mom worked for aid to families with dependent children, or more commonly named welfare. At the time she showed me the cost analysis for a family of four. The standard of living had not been increase in since 1958 when the cost of living was much less. Really everything was accounted for something like 6-cents per person for toilet paper and so on. Enough for subsistance living but never enough to escape poverty unless you actually broke the rules. If they paid families what they pay coporations in "welfare" money they don't earn by working...the country would be better off.
Note to Barn Burner: AFDC was repealed back in 1997.
It no longer exists. Such things as job skills training are, technically, available via the state Dept. Workforce Development, but remember that the options you cited have the means to assist only a small fraction of those in need. For every job skills training slot that opens, for example, there are many, many applicants, and only one can be chosen. In most of the country, for every job opening, there are at least dozens of applicants.
The public always had only a vague (and highly inaccurate) idea of what social services actually provides. Perhaps you could list some of the "advocacy" groups that you mentioned? For the overwhelming majority of those who seek the type of assistance you mention, whether job training or legal aid or anything else, every door remains closed. Remember, these options are not entitlements.
On a related issue that I have not yet seen addressed in the public arena: If you recall, our legislators assured the public that every dollar removed from the system that once provided AFDC would be redirected into jobs, education, job training, etc. In fact, only a small fraction of that money went into this. The rest went into a wide range of other things not connected with providing services that people need to be able to become self-supporting, much less helping them through a time of crisis. For example, millions of dollars have gone into building fine new Workforce Develop office buildings that provide the public with very little beyond a copy of the want ads from the local newspaper.
You have a good handle Barn Burner. Is it after the Faulkner story "Barn Burning"? That is one spine shivering story about the power of a bad family over a child who has no place else to go.
It sounds like you do not get to know parents until they are in stage 4 of dysfunction. Do you have any ideas about whether and how early intervention could help?
Once a neighbor of mine rang my doorbell and said to me "Here take them" and handed me her two kids. The kids were sickly and whiny and the husband was always away for work. (Later the kids were found to have kidney valve problems that caused their constant distress). About an hour later she reappeared, relaxed, showered, in a caftan and with a glass of wine in her hand. She said she was ready to take them back.
So that is one tiny incident that shows if a person recognizes they are at the end of their rope and knows that someone will help them, some ugliness can be prevented.
If you think that's bad -- America's rural poor, primarily white and Native American, have it worse, particularly in the area of abuses by county social services agencies. County case workers know that they have carte blanche; argue with a case worker, and you risk having your child taken into "indefinite custody".If you try to fight back, the agency will allege "child abuse/neglect", and there is nothing you can do about it. They do NOT have to present a shred of proof, or even a "reasonable argument".
Of course, many have tried to secure equal legal rights for the rural poor. None of our legislators, nor the legal aid offices, no legal organization (including the ACLU), has deemed this issue to be "important enough" for their attention.
When it comes to race, those most at risk of having their children taken are the rural poor, and specifically (A) those without a close circle of family nearby; (B)those with blue-eyed blond
babies (for which there seems to be a market among America's rich).
I say to you who have never been a foster parent "you don't know what your talking about". In Washington State contraception, parenting classes, Aide to dependent children, and job training are available, encouraged and mandated by the court for Mothers (the dads are seldom around-just boyfriends) to Mothers in danger of losing their kids. Even then the Mother (parents if two are available-like never)has to sign off the child in order for it to be adopted. There are all kinds of advocacy groups to protect the mother's rights and help them get what they need. Do they take advantage of the help offered-never in my experience, there may be exceptions since my experience is only in one State. We fostered a number of children before adopting and as I said, unless you have fostered or adopted from Child Protective Services you don't have a clue
In a McChristianized America will abortion be mandatory for women whose credit scores fall below the 500 level?
hellodarling,
I have a better idea, Mandatory contraception for the wealthy. The when we are all middle class, we can begin to see other people as ourselves.
It always amazes me that affluent ( and even modestly well-off) folks like to blame the poor for being poor. Some even suggest that they must be sinful and possibly evil to have been left out of God's blessing and bounty. And, of course, these people are so deeply racist they assume that it's much more difficult for a black person to be redeemed of an almost atavistic evil. Sadly, I don't think they can see the ever-increasing inequality as a policy problem that can be fixed. John Edwards' failure to catch on is evidence of that.
P.S. Excellent postings in general! One can conclude that US society, bent on war and macho sporting events puts children and families low on its priorities list. How to move from a care-less to caring society will be the issue as resource scarcity moves up a notch thanks to global warming, the end of oil, and our empty US treasury (aided and abeted by jobs gone overseas).
Truth_Forward - one more thing. I cannot imagine the motivation or information guiding the social worker who told you that being white was a problem for getting welfare. Married yes, because that can mean two potential incomes. But in my entire life I have seen no evidence that being white is an obstacle to getting benefits. PS - I am white. Besides, most black people work. The subways are full of black working men and women.
Does anyone have any statistics regarding whether African Americans, Native Americans, or any OTC (other than Caucasian) group has an easier time with social welfare? My sense is that it is the opposite because if someone is going to get the benefit of the doubt, it would most likely be Caucasians.
FUNEOCONS: Excellent posting, thank you for sharing it. I come up against this problem with my intelligent friends. The right wing media has done such a "successful" smear job against people in need, setting them up as the guzzlers of enormous funds to get the focus away from who REALLY is picking our pockets. How about subsidies to the oil companies even NOW with their amoral obscene profits of war? There are so many tragedies in our time. One has to be strong inside to remain whole in the face of them.
xntrk suggested we "pay low-income families with one stay-at-home parent a living wage if they achieved certain bench marks". This is something to think about. A good parent who takes full time care of kids is a blessing to society. They do this in France.
Thomas More has asked about what you are now allowed to own if you are on welfare - I do not know.
About the young man who had himself sterilized: We all have to make some hard choices regarding children. With heavy hearts, we decided to stop at two children, because we were struggling to take good care of the wonderful ones we already had. If that man wants children, his self-sterilization is almost tragic. I hope if he changes his mind he can adopt. Basics like health care and education should not be so expensive that they completely rule our parenthood for all but the wealthy.
As adaptable beings, we should continually look at the new situations we face and be ready to entertain innovations that lead to a sustainable and humane future. Raising a couple of kids in a wealthy country should not be such a daunting task.
Wow!!
What an interesting discussion. I can see the old divide and conquer strategy still works.
"These people should just get a job"
"These people should provide a safer environment for their children"
Classic! Keep the middle and working classes fighting over and about the crumbs that account for this type of so-called government welfare while billions (with a "B") and now trillions (with a "tr") are stolen.
Government welfare comes in many forms and the pittance that could be paid to assist families is minutiae compared to what each family is paying anyway to fund the Iraq War/Occupation.
Would that people would stop majoring in minors. A good place to begin putting it into perspective is here:
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home
Suddenly the prospect of my tax dollars going to help a mother get educated and keep her family together doesn't seem so beyond the pale.
I guess I'm just grateful because there by the Grace of God go I
Sadly we had, at times, seriously discussed divorce so she and the children could get medicaid. It shouldn't be that way.
We shouldn't be punishing the child for what society has wrought.
It's sad anytime a child is taken away from its natural parent(s). Native-American children in Alaska are still taken away from their parent(s) at a disproportionate rate, over flimsy, unprovable reasons. They are placed in foster homes that are no better, if not worse, than the original family and then pretty much forgotten about. I've heard of sexual abuse in foster homes where the perpetrator is not charged with the crime.
I talked to a very intelligent person from a 3rd world country once. He graduate from high school but had no college education. He said he didn't plan to have children because he wanted to be able to give the child everything, including and especially a good education. He knew he couldn't, so he chose to be sterilized.
I wonder why people in this country don't look ahead as this young man did. Instead, without giving it much thought, they bring children into the world that they can't possibly afford and whom they can't properly educate. Talk about a dumbed-down culture.
Truth_Forward ...You make a good point but I disagree with your conclusions.
People who marry, work and do all the "right things" still need help from time to time. Our approach to helping families requires that first they prove total impoverishment through some degradation ceremonies. (Same goes for disabled people). The poverty level is set so unrealistically low that people who make a good effort to support themselves disqualify themselves for help.
I know a loving family in which a child needed expensive medical care. The father moved out because his salary as a pizza delivery man and another such job put them too high to get Medicaid.
Getting family benefits should be less difficult and degrading. There are ways to do this and we have great models in European countries.
Funny when I see people on welfare I think back to when my wife and I struggled to provide a decent life for our children. When we appled for assistance we were told by a very frank caseworker not to hold our breath. The reason we wouldn't get assistance? Because were were white and married.
The case worker actually told my wife that she and our children would have had a better chance of getting on welfare if were weren't married. Where are the benefits for poor married couples? They're nowhere to be found. We worked our fingers to the proverbial bone to get the reasonably decent life our family now enjoys. So in my one point of agreement with conservatives: Get a job.
pdf - you raise a point I have thought about for years. Anyone can become a parent with no qualifications. You sometimes see people who are cold, negligent, incompetent, harsh, insane etc. raising children and there is little you can do. To my mind the basic qualifications for parenting are the ability to love, the willingness to try to provide. But how do you legislate that?
For one thing we should recognize that the nuclear family provides little mitigation for the weaknesses of a particular parent. Kind grandparents, aunts and uncles are potential assistants to a parent. If it were not for extended families, the situation would be much worse. For children of the rich, nannies often provide attention, warmth, common sense and guidance missing in the home. Nannies deserve a union, wages and benefits commensurate with their importance. However, sometimes the extended family or direct help are not there.
The only solutions I see come from our wider human interconnectedness. We can honor the enterprise of parenting by giving parents some economic breaks. What could be a more important "crop" or "product" than our children? Parents should be assisted in finding work that pays and in getting good subsidized care for their children. The hours of work should be flexible enough to match the hours of childcare and the length of the commute. A long or unreliable commute is one of the big stresses for working mothers especially.
Even selfish people can recognize that they are going to need today's children in the future to be the nurses, doctors and grocery store clerks who will provide for them when they get old.
We can also free a child from being at the total mercy of his or her biological parent. We can have classes about sexual responsibility and parenting in schools so those who are too young are less likely to have children. We can make contraception easy to find and afford. We can have Head Start to give children at least part of the day in a nurturing environment. Same with public school. We can look out for one another and help isolated and stressed parents through programs in churches and community organizations. We can make mental health care available.
Taking children away from their parents should be one of many options in a social network.
The Australian Government in the past practiced similar policies on Aboriginal Children, taking young children from their natural parents who were in poor situations, and sending the children to institutions or adoption. The lost ophaned children later became known as the "Stolen Generations". The practice in general harmed both the children and the bereaved parents, and did nothing for social and economic conditions that provide the excuses for the practice. So much harm was done that the newest Australian Government has publicly apologized for this as part of how the Australian Aboriginal people were treated in the past. It remains to be seen as to whether future generations will manage any better. Pretending there is no problem is never a solution.
With the wave of poverty increase to be expected in future in the US, it remains doubtful as to whether the US government will even fund the crude unnatural and uncaring sort of intervention seen now. Support for free contraceptive availability and education would prevent many unwanted pregnacies to lead ultimately to the legal but savage separation imposed by the state. Many of these children taken by the state will end up in prison. Every nation reaps again and again what it sows.
When capital pays husbands they get two workers, not one."[4]
http://nbjournal.org/2007/07/selma-james-and-the-wages-for-housework-campaign
""We don't know that the mother in this article was making an honest effort to take care of her kid, was getting laid in front of the kid, using drugs""...
Oh heavens, my twin sister and i slept in the same room with Mom And Dad till we were 14, we built the last outhouse in Van Nuys. Dad converted a three car garage to live in.
We fed ourselves out of what grew in the dirt in the back yard for 30 years. Mom swept machine shop chips out of the kitchen into the service porch for decades. I got a new blanket when i was 11, took my first shower at a friends house at 16.
They throwed the TV away, never had a heater in the house except the stove till i went away to collage. Dad taught the dog to lift his leg on strangers AND he got hisself a "job" as an engineer at 63 years old. Northrop-Grumman Research Lab laid him off when he turned 81.
We were uneducated losers, you bet. 10 percent of the kids in my hood died from their overdoses or addictions, a RichWhite section of LA. RichWhite is one word in black LA.
I'm a fingerprinted, police checked child and infant Visitation Moniter in California.
When one mother of my charge paid the airfare to Sacramento for a topnotch Pediatric MD to see her sick child, I was REMANDED by the #!!judge in the Children's Court for ALLOWING a second opinion! The Fed replaces every dollar the State spends when a child is kept out of its home: Childrearing is a crime in this country- unlike most other 1st world countries which pay tax dollars into childrens households.
Moms do fifty percent of the medical care in America, 90% of household work, have 20 hour days, yet NONE of this is measured under Keansian or "FreeTrade" as labor.
Come visit me in South Central Los Angeles and tell these women that they are lazy too their face...
Siouxrose from my admittedly limited experience most of the Mothers I knew were offered parenting classes, food stamps, job assistance and couldn't be bothered. As I said the MANDATE of the courts is to keep the "family" together and every child that I was involved with should have been taken out of the "natural family" long before they were-these kids come out of those "natural families" forever broken, many with fetal alcohol syndrome. The person that posted something like "the last thing the social worker wants is to get the family off welfare" insinuating that they need to perpetuate their job, that post showed total ignorance. Social Workers are up to their ass in alligators and sure as hell don't need a bigger case load. We don't know that the mother in this article was making an honest effort to take care of her kid, was getting laid in front of the kid, using drugs etc., this story doesn't pass the smell test and my guess there is more to it that we are given. I know there are stupid, disinterested and many burnt-out social workers out there but from my experience they are the exception. Most carry impossible case loads, funds cut by State and Federal Governments and a Court that wants to keep "the abusive family" together as if that "togetherness" hadn't already created a child that will seldom grow up to function well in society.
I wish I had the space and time to relate all the stories of children left with the "natural Parent" who ended up getting drugs as a toddler, being brutilized by the mom's johns, carried along to watch the "mom and Dad" break someones arms and legs, sexually abuse, burnt with cigarettes.
Yes poverty breeds some of this but the inability to make good choices time after time is not the direct result of poverty however making the wrong choice time after time can certainly get one in poverty.
Christy38401: the largest recipient of "welfare" in this nation are the wealthy. Take a huge tax deduction for your mortgage interest? For your kids private school/college tuition? And don't even get me started on corporate welfare. The role of government is to protect its citizens and ensure their well-being. What better role for government to play than to assist families to be successful? To prevent them from being taken advantage of by slum lords and unscrupulous rent-to-own businesses, pay-day loan sharks, etc? We make being poor a crime in this country, and believe me, it costs tax payers many times less to prevent this woman from having her children taken away than it does for them to go into state custody.
I worked in the field for 10 years and saw a black woman have her child taken from her based on false claims from a clearly motivated party, and in the most tragic comedy of errors, despite doing everything possible to comply, had her rights eventually severed by the state of California. She was poor, but she took good care of her child (children - her daughter who was of no interest to the party making claims stayed with her throughout). As a white woman, I watched helplessly (I tried to help her, but to no avail) knowing that this could never, ever happen to me. It was a very eye-opening experience.
What do you expect from a country that cares Zero about human life, the gov't just loves it when they outlaw abortion in the southern states where god & war go hand in hand I mean you won't find an unnamed highway overpass of some dead young man who was brainwashed into the iraq war and had his caucus splattered everywhere for the oil baron profiteers. Child birthing should be the last thing on a modern woman's mind
BARN BURNER: I realize a lot more than $ is involved if one opens their home to a child. My point was that if $ could be given to the mother to hold her life together, the whole system might be dismantled; but of course the tragic cases you related PROFOUNDLY needed intervention. It boggles the mind what some can do to children, including their own!
The article makes it sound as if Lisa was only brought to the attention of Children's Aid when she complained about her landlord. Maybe the message is to keep quite and don't make waves.
When Bill Clinton and his wonderful wife decided to do away with welfare 'as we know it' I was appalled. The program was established along with Soc Sec to take care of children. When they threw out the mothers, they also threw out the kids. Kind of a baby and bathwater affect.
At that time I was on the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and had also chaired the 1992 State Democratic Platform Committee, so I had a bit of pull. But, not enough to overcome the lobbyists in favor of more cheap labor, subsidies to employers rather then families, and the usual bunch who hates government benefiting any but the wealthy.
I proposed a true Welfare Reform Package, that would pay low-income families with one stay-at-home parent a living wage if they achieved certain bench marks - like attending school and good grades and negative piss tests etc. And I mailed it out to every Women's Group and Welfare Reform Groups and political candidates I could think of.
When I got not one bite, not even from the very groups who were supposedly most concerned, I realized that the Social Worker Syndrome had struck. The last thing the social worker wants is for people to get out of poverty. That puts the SW out of work, so they were, and are, one of the biggest road blocks to true reform.
The proposal still exists I think, it was published on a Web Site called the www.TheWord, and is probably still floating around in the ether somewhere. I'd search it for Welfare Reform, or even 1994 articles.
To the person who asked is welfare wasn't actually the cause of black poverty and the destruction of many Black Families, I'd suggest you do some research on what happened when they 'reformed' Public Housing during the 50's.
Up until that 'reform', Public Housing was open to all lower income families, employed or not. Depending on the income, the rents were raised or lowered on a sliding scale. Once a family hit the ceiling - which was pretty high, they had to move. Before the reform, the Public Housing Projects were typical working class neighborhoods, with mostly working families, military families, and some retired and unemployed people.
When they lowered the income levels to the poverty rate, the working families had to move. I know about this first hand, as many of my friends in highschool on Beacon Hill in Seattle had to move from homes they had lived in since the end of the war [I think this was 1953, when the Republicans took over]
I later wound up on welfare for a brief time in the late 50's. At that time, in Washington State, they had an incentive program to get women off welfare. They figured out the bare minimum a woman and 2 pre-schoolers could exist on, then deducted 20% off the top to provide an incentive...
Thank god and the Democrats for an end to that! Johnson's War on Poverty provided technical training to thousands of unemployed across the country. We got good paying jobs if we finished the program, which most did. We never looked back. That is what it takes to really reform welfare - not some parsimonious handout from a bunch of tight-assed do-gooders!
Out becoming fathers again.
"Have you tried living on the minimum wage?"
Most people don't earn minimum forever. There is a lot of churn in the actual people who make that.
"Many are single mothers that have never been married, "
Where are the fathers?
Well Christy, I think it's the government's job because they are depending on the next generation to pay back the money they have borrowed; it's their job because they have made it impossible for her to earn a decent living, even working two jobs and neglecting the children; it's their job because She and her children are citizens of a country whose constitution says that governments are instituted to serve it's citizens.
Have you tried living on the minimum wage? How about welfare? How about with two kids and an abusive husband? How about all three while dealing with chronic depression?
I think maybe it is not just the government but you, christy38401 who are your sister's keeper.
Earl Simmins May 12th, 2008 3:27 pm writes "lnteresting system; take a child place it in the care of strangers and pay them to raise the child but don't provide help to the natural mother to raise her child(ren). What's wrong with this picture?"
I can not speak for other States but I can speak for Western Washington which I imagine is not too different from the rest.
I was a foster parent (most often a mother that is more interested in pleasing her boyfriend that taking care of the kid) for a few years when I lived in the States and yes I was paid to take care of the children I fostered. The mandate of the Court is to keep the natural family together if at all possible. What this means in reality is that the kids are kept with their abusive parent so long that they are "broken" by the time the get into the foster system or are adopted. Some of the kids I fostered had fetal-alcohol syndrome, some had been left alone in apartments starving before they were taken over by the State, one of the two children I adopted was at five years old just brought into the Child Protective Services office and the Mother said "here, I don't want him anymore". All of the fostered kids as well as my adopted kids have thousands of dollars spent on them to sort of "normalize" them where they can at least function in society. My daughter is 13 now and doing well, my son is 11 and still a mess with an alphabet soup of syndromes. Yes, I received money from the system but it sure as hell wasn't enough to pay for the time and effort we put into helping these kids recover from their "natural family" such as it was.
Also, we don't know the whole story related in this article, maybe the mother was a drug addict and barley able to communicate or take care of the kids. People sometime write this stuff for sensationalism. As I said, the Social Worker is handicapped by the courts and often is unable to take the kids out of a rotten situation but is criticized for not doing so when one of them end up dead or severely abused.
Would someone please tell me why it is the government's job to help her raise her children? Do we live in a country with a socialist government? Nope. She should be working and earning money to pay her electric bill. Not child welfare's job to repair her home or advocate with her landlord. These are things she should be doing for herself. And, yes, they did need to remove the children from an unsafe environment and they should not be returned until the environment is safe.
Generational poverty, like generational wealth, has its own culture and its own rules. I know that I could no more survive in poverty than I could survive in great wealth. People born into generational poverty have to develop some incredible survival skills. One has to learn how to rely on relationships, move frequently, make do with very little. If "we" hope to reduce poverty and get people to "behave in responsible ways" then WE need to learn the ways of poverty and the poor need to be clued into the rules of middle class life.
Working with the very poor, one sometimes sees situations that call for intervention. Gandhi called poverty a disease, and yes, I would say that the pressure from poverty can literally destroy the soul. To have people in this wealthy country living under those conditions is immoral. I have seen poor families struggle to guide their children despite the hardship, and I have seen situations where the children are placed into jeopardy by their parent's bad habits.
"But child-welfare authorities did not assist her in repairing her home or finding a new apartment, nor have they gone after her landlord for allowing deplorable conditions."
It's important for Landlord's to provide dismal-conditions for our Poorest -- otherwise, how would social-workers 'identify' these terrible/poor-Mom's? [Headstart can only report so-many of their "Base", after-all!]
I often see logical and rational reasons why parenting should be licensed; but when you take a nanosecond and consider that there is literally NO WAY this could be accomplished in a free society, it quickly degrades into a moot argument. When I see suggestions written here for manditory contraception, I ask myself the questions; Who would be sanctioned for breeding? Who would be deemed to have the where-with-all to procreate? The rich? The righteous? The ecologically sound? I'd theoretically consider many options, but the reality is that it could not happen in a democracy. Honestly, pretty much anything would beat the current situation of anybody with functioning genitals popping out offspring; but I'm afraid that's what we're stuck with!
elmysterio, stats show that the two highest rating states for charitable giving are Arkansas and Mississippi, two of the poorest states in the US. We who have little are more likely to share with others than those who have much. (This has been greatly demonstrated in the wake of all the Arkansas tornadoes this year - the first of which nailed my house.)
Perhaps some of the 8.9 MILLION millionaires in the US alone could share the wealth a little with some of their lesser well off neighbours in their community... Oh yeah, that's right... Americans don't like to share...
jclientelle May 12th, 2008 2:30 pm
"When inspectors came, we would hide the TV that a friend brought us from his sanitation route. Why? Because if you had a TV it proved you were so rich you didn't need welfare or public housing"
Do they still do this? In Texas you are allowed one car, makes no matter what. It could be a brand new Caddy. Only income counts here.
This is not a Republican problem nor is it a Democratic problem. Agencies struggle to help under both.
Siouxrose May 12th, 2008 2:42 pm
If you could see what some of these "wonderful" parents do to some of these kids it would turn your stomach. See the conditiion of these kids brought in by the workers.
They have the sad story down pat. Many are single mothers that have never been married, but have boy friends. Others are just abusive. A raped 5 year old will slake the milk of human kindness in anyone.
God help me, there was a time when I would cheerfully sent some of these people out onto the paddies and use them for target practice. Though it would have been too good for them.
Slightly off the mark...but the last reputable study I saw indicated that welfare per se was a large factor in the break down of the black family. Does anyone know about this? Any information to the contrary? Thanks
Great thinking, Earl... I find these days simplicity is a foreign language to damn near EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE... BUT mostly the 'educated' ones who spent their time in class rooms learning how to pass tests.
The po folks are raising up a new batcha soldiers... if they're taken away from the love they need, the VA won't be so overloaded with psych ward cases after they fight the next war.
The 'Airplane said it well in the sixties...
"War's good business - so invest your son, and I'd rather have my country die for me."
Odd, isn't it...that there is money to fund taking children away from their natural parent(s) and pay for fostering but none to help the family of origin stay together. Welfare was attacted by Republicans who could not stand seeing 'Welfare Mothers' driving fancy cars and wearing furs. (a myth made up of whole cloth) They pointed at a few cheats and got the entire program dumped. To me, Republicans are a scourge on the earth, an argument could be made that they should not be suffered to live.
For a normal newborn almost anything is possible. After that innocent animal is subjected to parenting and teaching and the lie that adults have agreed to call reality, the possibilities are limited.
All parents are, in one way or another, too poor to have children. Most parents suffer from multiple forms of poverty. The pain and stunted development of their victims is a blasphemy.
"What child does not have reason to be ashamed of his parents?"
---Nietzsche
And what is true for individual parents is true a hundred times over for society.
"there has to be rules."
Interesting thing about "rules." In most cases, those who wish to make the rules don't want those very same rule they propose applied to them. Example: The "Christian" right.
"lnteresting system;..."
Indeed...one of many in the "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave!"
lnteresting system; take a child place it in the care of strangers and pay them to raise the child but don't provide help to the natural mother to raise her child(ren). What's wrong with this picture?
Thanks Siouxrose. I don't regret anything that has happened to me. Sometimes I am empathic. Sometimes I am maaaaad!
Oh, so you were responding to the SUBJECT that i brought up and not me personally.
thanks for the clarification.
i have never suggested sterilization as a means of population control.
people need rules to live in everyday life. when concerning something as SACRED as bringing new life into the world, we should apply the strictest rules possible to ensure not only the health of the child, but the health of the community after the introduction of another member.
by creating virtually no-rules concerning having children, you inevitably get a nation of children with no safety net, parents with little or no education, and parents without the resources necessary to care for them.
there has to be rules.
Naturally I am for personal responsibility and contraception.
MANDATORY contraception and / or sterilization always come up in conversations involving poor people. It is arrogant, tiresome and offensive, bordering on eugenics.
Does anyone suggest this for the Enron types?
"The challenges of your childhood have made you a highly empathetic and intelligent individual capable of seeing others' pain"
he just told me to go kill myself when i suggested PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY and BIRTH CONTROL.
My last statement is awkward. I apologize. The pursuit of punishment is indeed a factor, and at times it dovetails with the role GREED plays in and through so-called social services. (There, now I feel better.)
JCLIENTELLE: The challenges of your childhood have made you a highly empathetic and intelligent individual capable of seeing others' pain. Perhaps in some respects the "Initiation" was worth it.
I know a woman in N.Florida who takes in foster kids and she is paid quite a bit of money for this service. It reminds me of the prison industrial complex... always $ to build prisons, but no $ for rehab and we all know drugs and alcohol abuse play a HUGE role in crime and/or who gets incarcerated. Why is a huge budget provided to "foster" parents (lots of kids end up sexually abused in these "borrowed" homes) but as J CLIENTELLE related, not anything given to PRESERVE the home intact? It's another one of America's many travesties that become tragic due to the pursuit of punishment often working to further the influence of greed over our social systems.
How could i reduce Earth's population by one?
Are you suggesting i commit suicide or murder?
Why does common sense elicit such hysterical responses from these trolls?
Wow, i suggest personal responsibilty and birth control and i get told to go kill myself. wonderful!! i guess i know when i'm not wanted.
The problem of poverty is huge and it is never simple to tease out the contributions of social conditions and personal responsibility. But taking children away from their parent, and likely splitting them up too, is a very very traumatizing response to an unpaid electric bill. How about spending a few dollars to pay the bill (far less than paying for foster care, BTW) and then working with the mother to see how to prevent this in the future?
But when it comes to NY authorities dealing with poor people, it is shoot first, ask questions later. I know because we grew up in a project with a sick mother, and were sometimes on welfare. Our biggest fears were being evicted for some infringement of the rules and regulations or being split up and placed in foster care.
When inspectors came, we would hide the TV that a friend brought us from his sanitation route. Why? Because if you had a TV it proved you were so rich you didn't need welfare or public housing. When our mother was hospitalized we hid the fact, got jobs and paid the bills in cash so nobody would come in, evict us and send us to foster care.
People who are not poor and have petty dominion over their lives always think the worst of the poor. It is very Dickensian still. I imagine it is even worse if you are African-American.
And hellodarling - you can easily reduce earth's population by one and I recommend it.
I have a solution: mandatory contraception. Not forever, just until we can figure out how to care for ALL children before bringing more into the world, thus compounding the problem.
Good intentions, eh?
There's another thing that happens to children who are placed in foster homes, they're more likely (not certain to become, but close enough for those in charge) to wind up in jail. Now why would we want more black people in jail? It couldn't be to profit the prison industry as well as justify the 'beliefs' of those who espouse the rhetoric of 'white power' could it?
Am I too cynical????
"concludes that poverty is the leading cause of children landing in foster care"
It takes more studies to conclude this? We knew this in the sixties.
If you can't earn enough to support your children and yourself, then you live in poverty. What a surprise.
Without the money to help these people with services they need, I don't see what the author is proposing? How do you allieviate poverty? This is a social problem in any case, not a legal problem.
"But child-welfare authorities did not assist her in repairing her home or finding a new apartment, nor have they gone after her landlord for allowing deplorable conditions."
How in the world anyone would interpret child-welfare authorities duties to include these responsibilities is beyond me. That is not their responsibility.
When we did away with the old case worker system that could help these families in these areas for these new multi-faceted programs that were going to help everyone, we lost the ability to have individual attention to families.
Good intentions don't always produce good results.