Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Big Sad Hole
Anything Crocker Stephenson writes, I read right away. Love his writing – how he gives readers a seat across the table from a crack addict – and I trust his eye. He is, as my grandmother would say, just right as rain — or maybe it’s good as gold. Or both. So when he started the new series in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, Lives Torn Upside Down, about three families struggling in the foster care system, I was all over it. http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/103251879.html I was really excited to see this issue on the front page, partly because I’m an adoptive mom of three but also because I’m a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) for a teenager who has been in foster care for 2 1/2 years, surviving six placements.
So far, the articles have tracked the course of three families – two women seeking reunification with their children and a married couple wanting to adopt the foster child they’ve cared for since birth. The articles focus – and I’m so grateful for this – on the human impact of the child welfare system – the delays, staff changes, permanency plan changes and how these things mystify and frustrate everyone involved. But the other overarching focus is on the question of parents’ rights vs. children’s rights with the theme seeming to be that the ‘system’ is putting parents’ rights over the best interests of the child. I think here we are missing something really, really important.
Children truly love their birth parents. They love them when the birth parents are addicts, when they’ve neglected them, and even when they’ve been abusive in other ways. They love them — and I know this firsthand as an adoptive mom — even when they have no conscious memory of them. Adopted children, mine and millions around the world, have a sadness, a longing, a hunger of memory, that is unfathomable to those of us who grew up with our birth parents. And this sorrow – this big sad hole – hurts them in a lot of ways. It’s a rare adopted child who can even articulate this – but the effects are manifest in depression, substance abuse, employment problems, relationship issues. Don’t get me wrong — adopted kids love their adoptive parents. Our kids love us and we know it and are glad for it every day. But still, we know…..there’s that missing piece.
So when we decide that “Oh, gee, this foster kid’s mom is never going to get it together, let’s terminate her parental rights,” we had better have a pretty damn good explanation to give that child when he/she asks why. And it can’t be some namby-pamby, “Your mom loved you very much but she just wasn’t able to take care of you.” That response – which makes the adults feel magnanimous and non-judgmental and thus is often hard for them to utter because of their own opinions about the birth parents – just won’t cut it. The adopted kid will think (but not say) “Why didn’t you help her more?”
So I guess to assume that reunification is evidence of parents’ rights trumping kids’ best interests is to shortcut the analysis into opposing teams. If we are supportive of parents regaining custody of their kids, then we’re for parents’ rights. If we support quick TPR and adoption, we are looking out for children’s best interests. It’s so not that simple. It’s so much more complex and deeper and longer term. To understand the choices, we have to understand the pain – everyone’s.
4 Comments on “Big Sad Hole”
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments
 | MaryG on The Searing Comfort of Layla |
 | Nancy Bauer-King on Brevity is Beautiful |
 | joviald3f8e0e214 on Brevity is Beautiful |
| Nancy Bauer-King on Truck Life in the Big City |
 | Deb on Truck Life in the Big City |
Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
This is one of the issues that has most befuddled me, in my work within the child welfare system. In fact, I would say it is THE issue in that system.
Kids got taken away from mom for good reason. Mom wants kids back. Kids want to be with Mom. But kids are also scared of Mom, and mad at her. But oh, do they love her.
As you mention, Jan, that is one of the things that has most shocked me, as an outsider of these family situations. When Mom has neglected them, abused them, or been completely checked out, those kids STILL LOVE her. So much. Looking in, I’d think… “How could they still love her, after all that?” But they do. So much.
Recently, I was working with a family that has been split up by Mom’s incarceration. BMCW is moving forward with TPR. Knowing this family, I know that that is one of the worst possible things that could happen for these kids. Why doesn’t anyone see this??
Looking at the case in broad brush strokes, you’d see: OK, Mom killed Dad, in front of the kids. She must be a HORRIBLE mother. Get those kids away from her! But she is not. She is warm, gentle, attentive with the kids. She pours love and affection on them, and they soak it up like cracked desert earth receiving a fresh rain. They dote on her, and she dotes on them. Yes, they have problems as a family, but the essence of a true family – love – is most certainly present.
Sometimes, I think BMCW workers are so busy with the details and logistics of every family they work with, they are not able to take the time to know the depths, the complexities of each family. I sincerely hope that the problem is not that they’re not interested in those depths/complexities. For some of the workers I’ve known, that may be true. For many, I think they’d LOVE to be more involved; they just truly cannot, because of the demands of the job.
I am willing to be my own sort of advocate for them, but I’m just not sure how to do that. Only certain people have voices, in this system. I hope they get a CASA like you.
This is tough, tough stuff. Thanks for the thoughtful post. Really got me thinking again….
I know what you mean about the Bureau workers. Sometimes I think they just don’t see/sense the human relationships. And can’t deal with the intangible in any way. The horrible thing is knowing that the system itself is doing worse things to kids than their parents may have done….revictimizing, blaming, punishing. It’s a wonder any kid survives the experience. I wish more light was shining on the system — besides the newspaper’s sensationalistic dips into the topic. Thanks for reading and sharing your experience.
My grandchildren are in foster care in Michigan and I have bee trying to get them for over a year. there are 4 of them so the first thing they toleme was to get a biiger place to live so I bought a big house. Then they sai I would need a home study so when i moved I went down to my local DSS and asked for one. they said an interstate compact would need to come from MI since I am in another state. It took several months to get them to send one apparently noone knew whos job that was. When it finally came, I found out I needed to be a licensed foster parent. Ok while had I known I could have started the classes sooner but opps they neglected to tell me that. So now I am lisenced and have done everything asked of me and they get some social worker to say the children are traumatized by me while the foster parents are filling their minds with lies trying to alienate the children from me. We had always had a good relationship I took them for a couple weeks every summer and talked with them frequently on the phone but since going in foster care gifts i send are returned. I wan’t allowed to talk with them on the phone until I hired an attorney and have still only been able to get 2 hour suppervised visis and since I have to fly from another state that pretty costly. Mind you I hsve an impecable background check the judges word not mine but because of the social worker report that was all the judge would give me. I am a registered nurse work in the ER and have no criminal record whatsoever and am a licensed foster parent so you tell me whats going on here. Crooked system in MI
Jan, my singel-parent mother was significantly mentally ill and an alcoholic. My siblings and I went through all kinds of living situations, including foster homes, short-term family placements, we even had people come in and stay with us in our home (sort of like babysitters paid by the county). Whenever I hear about the parent’s rights to get their kids back, I’m conflicted. Frankly, I think I’d been better off if I was placed in a stable home that kept me. It’s hard to know that, and I also know it’s difficult to find people who’ll adopt kids, but I always resent the focus on the parent’s rights cuz I know damn well how hard it is on the kids to go through this kind of stuff – and a lot of foster homes are horrible too.
I still have some emotional work to do on this, I guess 🙂
Thanks for sharing…