"There are many possible ways the government could support the welfare of children. The most successful approach would be to invest in the things that have been proven to promote children's well-being: a living wage and income supports for parents; high-quality housing, nutrition, child care, and health care; freedom from state and private violence; and a clean environment. The United States doesn't focus on providing these things to families. In fact, it ranks the worst among industrialized nations for guaranteeing resources children need to be healthy and happy. Instead, US welfare policy centers on protecting children from alleged parental maltreatment by investing primarily in tearing families apart."
I found that quote in Dorothy Roberts' Torn Apart. Roberts is amazing. She isn't afraid to call bullshit when she sees it. And she is persistent. Her Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare was published in 2001. It was about black families being disproportionately likely to be torn apart by children's "protective" services. She'd learned the statistics when doing the research for her Killing The Black Body that concerned the criminalization of a public health issue. Shattered Bonds was the first book to address the racism, implicit and systemic, prevalent in CPS in 29 years. Between then and now things got worse, necessitating the writing of Torn Apart. Her current book is centered on three realities: CPS is NOT benevolent or even harmless; its history is not the benign Hallmark story we've been taught; and aims at reforming it can never go far enough.
!) Don't let its title fool you. Roberts calls them a benevolent terror. They reflect all the biases of our society: racism, sexism, classism, ableism etc. In other words they target the most vulnerable families with the intent of breaking them up rather than actually helping them. They're very good at seeing poverty as neglect. An investigation can be triggered by an anonymous tip from a source who may have less than pure motives. A CPS worker, sometimes accompanied by a police escort, can show up unexpectedly and without a warrant. The home is searched and family members are interrogated separately. The love of the parents is weaponized against them. They're constantly being threatened with loss of their children if they don't submit every aspect of their life to scrutiny and fulfill ever demand made of them even ones inconsistent with holding down a job to provide for their children. And it gets worse, so much worse. Electronics and algorithms are now used in the inquisition. Remember the pandemic when the kids attended school remotely? Those little cameras can pick up a lot. And there are whole industries making a lot of money out of family dissolution. Don't believe me? Read the book.
2) We've been taught that CPS was brought about by people being concerned about the plight of poor children and finding a way to remove them from lives of squalor and criminality in the 19th century. It's roots run much deeper and darker. One strand goes as back as slavery days. Back then Black children on plantations could be sold away from their families or lose one or more parents to the auction block any time their owner needed quick cash, often never again to see them. After emancipation the Black Codes said that Black children could be "bound out" as apprentices to white planters if white judges felt that the placement would be better for them. "Apprenticeship is the historical bridge that connects state disruption of Black families under the antebellum slavery system with state disruption of Black families under the twentieth century foster care system." Another strand goes back to the Indian Wars when the government was striving to destabilize Indigenous tribes in order to steal their land and its natural resources. "Just after 'Custer's Last Stand,' as the battle came to be called, the federal government devised a new military strategy to destabilize its Native opponents. It began stealing Native children from tribal communities and placing them in white-controlled boarding schools, where they were violently stripped of their languages, clothing, and customs and compelled to work without compensation." We're talking over 100,000 children, many who died of untreated illness, malnutrition, and abuse,
3). People are now calling for abolition of the current criminal "justice" system because mere tweaks can never eradicate the systemic evils at its core. Roberts applies the same logic to CPS. In fact she shows that, rather than being two separate systems, they're two sides of the same vile coin, working hand in hand, for instance, in immigration cases where CPS is in bed with ICE.
If you already haven't become sufficiently earlier on wait til you hit the chapter that shows that multiple studies show that kids and teens in foster care are more likely to be neglected, harmed, molested, and killed and to have poorer adult outcomes on a wide measure of outcomes than peers who remained in their homes, especially when for profit organizations were involved.
Roberts spells out how we can transition from a nation that fractures families and damages children to one that supports families and communities and enables children to achieve their potentials. It'a a path we can't afford not to take. If it bothers you that this nation is worst in the industrialized nations for guaranteeing resources children need to be healthy and happy you owe it to yourself to read this powerful and persuasive book. Let's finally do something to address the problem. Let's not make it necessary for Roberts to issue another warning in the 2040s!!!
On a puuursonal note. Although I am white and experience privilege every day because of my skin color Eugene and I raised our children under the circumstances Roberts acknowledges under which other factors such as class determine who is targeted. The town we live in is super majority (about 98%) white with a stark contrast between rich and poor neighborhoods. The school that serves as the center of the community was top down classist. My family lived in the trailer park that was called Harlem North. Kids from other neighborhoods weren't allowed to go there for even peers' birthday parties. The principal had DHS on speed dial and weaponized it. Kids and parents lived in fear of their cars pulling up. I spent eleven years on school board as an advocate for the Graystone kids. I knew I was privileged in the park because Eugene had a very stable job that allowed me to be a stay at home mom. There were single moms faced with a heartbreaking decision with every child's illness and snow day: stay home and risk getting fired or go to work, leaving the kids home alone, risking getting reported. I opened my house for free to those kids. My house was called the breakfast club. On snow days I shepherded sizable groups on excursions. One child in a volatile home was over a lot of nights also. The school admin has changed for the better. I made sure to be on the principal search committee. A group of us worked with an organization to turn our trailer park into a self-running cooperative, a move I'm sure Roberts would have applauded.
A great big shout out to Roberts for her truth telling and the groups she talks about who are working hard to change things.
Jules Hathaway
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