Customer Reviews

NOBODY'S CHILDREN: Abuse and Neglect, Foster Drift, and the Adoption Alternative

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Read this book written by a civil rights lawyer, feminist and Harvard Law professor who challenges traditional left and right poliltical perspectives on child abuse, family preservation and adoption. She is the mother of one child by birth and two by adoption who writes with power and emotion about the meaning of parenting and family.

She looks at the battered women's movement and asks why we have come to think that adult women should be liberated from abusive homes but still insist that children be kept at home pursuant to family preservation policies without regard to the level of abuse and neglect suffered.

Bartholet takes on the child welfare establishment and asks us to join her in pushing for radical rethinking of first premises. She wants our society to take adoption seriously for the first time ever, moving abused and neglected children into real homes so that they can survive and thrive. She wants to knock down the racial barriers that stand in the way of "Nobody's Children" finding the parents they need. And, finally, she points out that now is the time for reform if ever there is a time.

I am a mother of two birth children and one adopted child, adopted from foster care at age 13. I stumbled across this book in a bookstore one rainy day when I had hit the emotional low-point in my own adoption journey. I read it while I was struggling with the endless and maddening redtape and delays entailed in getting our foster child out of "the system" forever. "Nobody's Children" speaks to hundreds of thousands of Americans whose hearts and beliefs nudge them to contemplate domestic adoption, yet who encounter cultural and procedural barriers that discourage most from considering adoption from the foster care system. This is a carefully-researched and footnoted work by a distinguished former civil rights attorney--whose career included work at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and now Harvard Law School, where she teaches today. The author is herself both an adoptive and biological parent. Her book gave me new hope. I was inspired by it to work to help bring about the cultural shifts and procedural reforms described in this book, changes that will be required if our nation is truly serious about ending the tragedy (and travesty) of kids languishing in long-term foster care. Ignore reviews by some who utterly mischaracterize Bartholet's arguments. She, like Patrick Murphy before her, fully acknowledge that the vast majority of poor and minority families raise their children well and lovingly, and that far more social resources should be directed toward addiction treatment and supporting stressed-out birth mothers so they can keep their babies. Defenseless, innocent children are not, however, the chattel (private property) of their birth parents. All of us, as a civilized people, must speak out against policies and practices that severely limit a child's chance to be adopted after being subjected to acts of torture or repeated abuse and neglect. To fix "the system" and its horrors, more Americans need to open their homes to the children trapped in it. How to persuade people to consider adopting from foster care? Bartholet suggests a first step: imagine a system that promotes adoption as the best, instead of a second best, way to build a family. A book for dreamers and "doers" both.

I have been a single foster parent to two young sister for just over 21 months now. I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I love it because it backs up everything that I have concluded in my own experience about this system. I hate it because it depresses me that this book was published 11 years ago and is as accurate today as it was then.

Children in today's foster care system have become "plug-and-play" to CPS agencies. (That is my term, not Ms Bartholet's...) My "children" have been told they were leaving me on 6 different occassions: 1.) Two months in, going home to birth mom, didn't happen 2.) 5 months in, going home to birth mom, didn't happen 3.) 7 months in, going to live with a distant maternal cousin, didn't happen 4.) 13 months in, going to live with younger sister's birth father, didn't happen 5.) 16 months in, going to live with same maternal cousin, didn't happen and the last one 6.) 20 months in, going to live with birth mom, hasn't happened yet, although it is still planned. The children, currently 4 and 7, are too young to have to go through this emotional heck. Nobody in this system puts any emphasis on what this system does to the CHILDREN.

Nobody's Children clearly, concisely, and accurately depicts the system for what it is, a big hot mess. Despite the laws passed to diminish the time children languish in foster care systems (ASFA and Ohio House Bill 484) that require PERMANENCY planning around 15/12 months respectively, children are still facing long stints in foster care. Ms. Bartholet explains the impact of this in immense detail with accurate, and detailed footnotes. As she explains, and I can back up by experience, the unfortunate lack of clear definition of "permanency planning" has allowed local and state agencies to make up their own rules. For my county, birth families are given a minimum of two 6-month "extensions" to the ASFA. By this time, the birth connections of my foster children should have already been terminated based on federal and state law. The loophole, as Ms. Bartholet expresses in the book, is that with no clear definition, agencies can use their own judgment. For example, both the ASFA and the OH HB indicate that the agency must prove that they have done all they can towards reuining the child with the birth family. However, what does that mean? It varies from agency to agency, from county to county. In my county, children stay in care for years, whereas in a county just 2 hours away, birth rights are terminated in timely manner, children are then adopted with finalization of the same within 18-24 months.

In variably, this is the cycle: Child, age 4, enters CPS system. Enter Foster Family 1. Child stays 22 months. Child is reunited with birth mother/family member. Now child is aged 6. (This is assuming that the child has a good fit with first foster parent.) At age 4, the child has grown quite attached to his foster family, and now he is torn away to be returned to the same birth family that still causes the child bad dreams. Yes, the birth parent has done the very bare minimum required by the agency to be returned, but is that enough. So child is now 6 years old. Things go down the drain fast and within 6 months, child is removed again. The first foster family cannot take the child back because they have received another placement in the meantime. So child goes to another foster family. If luck is good, he will get another *good* family. (There are far more good families than bad, but I am not naive enough to believe that they are all great foster families.) By now, the child has been damaged more, experienced more attachment disruptions, and likely has little faith in the adults in his life. If he isn't acting out, he probably will begin soon. At the same time, until termination of parental rights happen, the child HAS to continue visits with the birth family who neglected/hurt him. He acts out beyond what his current foster family can handle. He is sent to another home. He may stay there another 6 months. By now, the agency finally terminates parental rights. But wait. Aunt Joann from 3 states over has indicated that she'd like to take the child. Because she is "kin", regardless of the fact that she doesn't personally know the child or his birth mother, she MUST be examined as a potential placement option. The child is forced to endure yet another visitation schedule with a complete stranger. Finally, another 6 months later, the child, now 7.5 years old (if not older) is made available for adoption. As luck would have it, his current foster placement does not want to adopt (some families really only do want to do only foster care) so he waits for a potential adoptive family. By now, his sense of trust is gone. His behavior issues have grown greatly, and while waiting to find an adoptive family, he grows out of control and is moved to a group home. Fast forward 10 years and this same child is now "Aging out of the system" as he turns 18 and is on his own, no family, adoptive or otherwise, to turn to for help. Yes my friends, this is exactly what is happening today in America. And these children who have aged out of the system are the same children who end up on drugs, committing crimes, being homeless, etc. The tax dollars that you spent keeping him in the system will now support him in his early adulthood as he enters a likely life of crime. If the he were a she, your tax dollars are now paying for the same system to support her child that has now been taken away from her and started in the same foster care system.

One wonders what would have happened had the child's birth parents' rights been terminated at 12 months, and the child, then age 5, could have been adopted by the foster family that he grew attached to, and whom he loved, and they loved in return.

She does not advocate taking children from poor families. There seems to be a continual stance of this from the communities that "lose" the most children. I have read unintelligible blogs, message board posts, etc., that all push the same stereotype: "Adoptive/Foster parents are those middle class people who can't have their own kids and want to steal *our* kids." That cannot be farther from the truth. In fact, in my Foster/Adopt Classes, there were only two middle-class "parents" in the class, myself, and another woman who had already raised two biological children. Most of the folks in this class fell into two categories: 1.) Working class couples who could not afford traditional adoption or 2.) Working Class couples/singles who CHOSE this path either because they had already raised bio children and had more love to give, or because they didn't see the rationale in bringing children into the world when there were so many who already were here and needed good parents. (the class was made up of about 10 couples and 4 single parents.) This data corresponds to what Ms. Bartholet reports in her book.

In fact, Ms. Bartholet highlights many, at the time, new programs that were having promising results in reaching out to the birth families before they could abuse/neglect their children. However, at the time of the publishing, those programs were not having long-lasting results. It doesn't take a rich person to parent well. In fact, I am quite certain that there are a great number of children who suffer similar consequences from "rich" families but do not end up in the foster care system due to extended familial connections. But, the numbers speak for themselves, there is greater abuses/neglects to children in poorer communities ravished by drugs and crime. I believe it was Isaiah Thomas' mother who raised him and his siblings on welfare, and they all grew to have successful lives. It isn't about the money. It is about the love.

There really are far too many argue points to highlight here. However, I'd highly recommend that anyone considering foster parenting, or foster/adopt options, to read this book. And for any case worker, agency director, the like, this book should be eye opening. Let's finally stop treating the youth of our lives, the future of our country, like they can be plopped from one home to another with no damage to their psyche. To suggest that children suffer forever from loss of family connections through adoption, and that the "loss" that brings to them is far worse than the damage brought upon by abuse and neglect (Yes, I have heard that argument used by case workers!) is preposterous and not based on one gram of evidence, anecdotal or otherwise. Children need loving homes. Period. First and foremost, they need their basic needs met. Those needs include emotional connections.

Anyway, go read the book. I can't help but wonder what would happen in our society if every lawmaker read this book.

As a professional who has directed two non-profit agencies focused on foster children, I was thrilled to find this book. Bartholet tells the truth (and documents it) about the illogic of the system and the frightening implications for abused and abandoned children. Adoption isn't a fairy tale--but it is the best choice for so many growing up without families of their own in America.

This book is great, because it talks about what foster care is about in the eyes of the author. I to have had my share of the juvenile courts issue. My children were removed from me on Dec. 16, 1990 by a police office not a social worker. I was charged on hearsay issues. I have always loved my children, but my mother had stolen my children because I was poor and unmarried. Now I have formed a class action against the abuse of the system.

Nothing more than another whining infertile wishing to strip all biological parents of their constitutional rights to parent their children without government interference, in hopes of increasing the already flooded pool of children awaiting adoption.

Ms. Bartholet does an excellent job of pointing out the serious flaws in the child welfare system in this country. Instead of calling for reform of what doesn't work, she contends the whole system should be thrown out. What she seems to be trying to say is that parents are replaceable and interchangeable, and children don't greive the loss of biological or cultural attachments. Her shift from removing children from abusive or neglectful parents to removing them from those she considers sub-standard is frighteningly Orwellian. While her suggestions would certainly make the pool of adoptable children more appealing for infertile couples and singles who will settle for nothing less than the healthy white infant/toddler, it does nothing for children living with parents they love, and love them, in spite of their failings.

Love and parenting are issues far to complicated to follow her suggestion that anything less than perfection demands all ties be severed.