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Nobody’s Children

by Elizabeth Bartholet

Elizabeth Bartholet points out the unwelcome truth that both left and right wingers argue for the rights of bad parents, ethnic groups, and local communities. Childrens’ rights to good homes carry little weight with either ultra-conservatives or ultra-liberals, a fact that is hidden by propaganda as usual.

She contrasts the therapeutic approaches of the child welfare system with the approaches of women’s rights movements. Women’s advocates fight for power, protection, prosecution and punishment—shelters, stalking laws and so on. Violent relationships between adults are not sent to the mandatory family preservation repair shop. Women can liberate themselves. Children cannot and they do not have the power to change legislation. It is often their mothers that children need liberation from. Women commit about 75 percent of child fatalities and severe assaults. Homicide from abuse and neglect is among the top child killers, about 2,000 per year.

Bartholet argues that parenting skills classes and similar remedies do little to help these screwed-up families. These families have severe crime, money, and substance abuse problems. She writes that an explosion of multiple drug use—especially cocaine and alcohol—in the 1980s is a cause of some of the worst families. “Drinking during pregnancy is the primary cause of preventable mental retardation in this country.” (Funny, how pro-drug arguments pretend children do not even exist.)

One-third of first time child abuse and neglect allegations end up being substantiated. Of the remaining two-thirds, 60 percent are the source of new allegations, which suggests that the majority of allegations are true. The three million annual cases of severe abuse and neglect equals about five percent of all children. Some might view one in twenty as minor. Not me. And remember that is per year. The probability of severe abuse and neglect over an entire childhood is much higher.

Despite the pro-child sound bites in the media, the current disaster arose within legal, social, and economic traditions that variously treat children as property, autonomous or nonexistent, depending on which adults stand to benefit. For bad parents, the philosophy behind these practices can be summarized in two words: Family preservation. Actions that would get a person sued or thrown in jail if practiced against an adult are accepted against children, yet both ultra-liberal cultural activists and ultra-conservatives support family preservation programs.

This asinine situation is not the least bit surprising. Bad parents get what they want: Little inference and much enabling behavior from the state. The childfree get what they want: Low cost children to cover the costs of their public and private retirements. That leaves a large number of individuals in neither group. Where are they? Busy being distracted and manipulated?

The rights of bio parents are almost always given more weight than the claims of children and adopting parents. The rights of children can be summarized as the right not to be treated similar to someone in a concentration camp after having been treated that way several times while the parent has had years to attempt rehabilitation. Am I exaggerating?

The author documents numerous horror stories of repeated beatings and burnings. Many children spend years in foster care limbo until the day they go back to their parent or parents to be revictimized.

Bartholet recommends that severely victimized children be moved into the best available home as soon as possible, not after they have spent several years receiving additional harm in miserable environments.

Our present policies have many bizarre traits. We spend the most money on families that are beyond repair—on rehab, foster care, and family preservation. We do little to help fixable families that are near the borderline.

Bartholet proposes intensive, universal, mandatory home visitation for young children. Visitation provides a surveillance effect. It monitors children and provides preventative incentives. She argues that these programs would be cost effective in the long run. She suggests eliminating family preservation programs. Stronger criminal sanctions are another recommendation. Prosecution, she suggests, will at least deter those who do it because they know they can get away with it.

She acknowledges studies that suggest that many children who were exposed to harmful drugs while they were fetuses recover fairly well, but fetal exposure is only the beginning. Being reared by a drug addict is often an even worse fate.

Most addicts will not sign up for treatment and most of those who do drop out. Meanwhile, childhood is spent with an abuser or in a foster home waiting for the return of the abuser. Research by the Rand Corporation suggests that 87 percent of cocaine users in treatment end up heavily relapsing. The opportunity losses of children are severe violations of rights that are often ignored.

Those who see more foster care as a solution are making a big mistake. Foster care is extremely expensive. Children do less well in foster care than in adoptive homes. Too many foster parents are themselves ambivalent and awful parents, especially those who have been pressed into foster service. In fact, children in adoptive homes do better than the general population of children, an astounding result considering some of the genetic and environmental baggage adopted children bring with them. The earlier children are adopted, the better; yet a mere ten percent of children taken by the state end up being adopted.

This work is best at arguing for the imperative of protecting abused children and reforming adoption policies. The argument is weakest when it ventures into nurture assumption and secure attachment theory territory. Numerous experts have blasted both theories. The text fails to emphasize that a major part of the success of adoptive homes is that adoptive parents can put children in better overall environments, not merely better home environments. I would guess that the general population of adoptive parents is in better moral and economic shape than the general population of biological parents. Sometimes Nobody’s Children refers to controlled studies and sometimes any old correlation is used in the argument. More important, it should have more specific recommendations, but the flaws of this work are minor compared to its wonderful strengths. Highly recommended.

Book review by J.T. Fournier.

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