A disclaimer here. First, this page is still under construction. Second, I remain jaded and angry about the things I have witnessed. Please do your own research and draw your own conclusions. As of today, this page is an OPINION page. Thanks for reading.
By the numbers: There are currently over 343,000 children in foster care. If you wanted to load them all onto a school bus with 72 children per bus, you would need 4,765 busses. If you loaded the children onto busses and wanted to drop them off at wrong houses across the country, one child per mile, a single bus would need to cross the country 102 times, stopping to drop off a child 3353 times per trip. Our brains cannot fathom large numbers. You need to be able to visualize the truth. Each of those children is a life. They have parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Five out of every one hundred American children, or one out of every twenty, will be in the foster care system at some point during their childhood. These children are harmed, and they often harmed more by the placement into foster care than they were ever harmed in their family of origin.
According to a study published in 2020, children in foster care are 42% more likely to die than children in the general population. All Cause Mortality Among Children in the US Foster Care System, JAMA Pediatrics, Vol. 174, No.9, 4/20/20. This is the truth. We need to face it. The children are also at risk of school failure, delinquent behavior, arrest, incarceration, and lifelong mental and emotional health problems.
Divorce, Out of Wedlock, and Legal Fictions
I’ve dedicated my life to children and one thing I can say with certainty is that every child has two parents. Here in America we like to believe we can avoid this truth. It is mind-boggling to me the arrogance that many people have that somehow, we can just declare that a child only has one parent, or that a child has three parents, or that we can just take a child away from a parent and pretend that all is well. All is not well. The children have two parents each and they need both of their parents in order to grow up healthy, safe and well-adjusted. The only people that can do more harm to children than the foster care system are the parents themselves, when they devalue each other and intentionally separate the children from one parent or the other. It doesn’t matter what excuse you have for it, it is never good enough. Children die because one parent or the other wants to cut the other off and we are horrified when the story makes the news. No court order nor psychological evaluation can overcome human reality. I am a product of divorce and have lived the nightmare. Sadly, I also divorced from the father of my four children, and though cognizant enough to encourage an ongoing relationship, I inflicted harm on my children. I don’t claim to be perfect. But I don’t close my eyes or my heart to the truth of the matter, nor should you. The children deserve better.
Education, Equality, and Opportunity
Children are made to be raised by families, and all children from all families should have equal access to a free and appropriate public education. Somehow we have decided that “equal access” means that all children of all abilities and all circumstances need to be grouped into same-age inclusive classrooms in the town or neighborhood where they live, and that the education that is “appropriate” for one is “appropriate” for all. Beyond that, we have removed all power from our qualified teachers and now expect them to indoctrinate our children in all variety of ways while ignoring the developmental needs of the children themselves. Schools drive separation between these children and their parents in the interest of pursing “progressive” ideals. I could lose my mind over this stuff. Instead I’m going to try to expose it and work for change. God help me. Though all of my children attended public schools and graduated from public high schools, I am not confident that I would allow any child of mine to attend public school today.
Courts and Justice
There will never be a day that a child sees justice in a court of law. That applies to family court, that applies to juvenile and child-protection court, and that applies to the delinquency courts. It is entirely a fiction. Our justice system is very broken. Our entire child welfare system is broken, our criminal court system is broken, our family court system is a money-making catastrophe, and in general, justice for our children is sorely lacking. To any degree that I once believed that becoming a lawyer would allow me to serve children well, it was a misplaced confidence. It is not that the people are bad. Most judges, most attorneys, and most people involved in juvenile law are good people, attempting to do good work and attempting to help children. It is the system itself that is broken. “We the people” need to take control and restore our system of justice to what it was intended to be.
On Medicine
We teach our children that drugs are good. We put them on pills to control their human nature as though pills are candy with magical power. If they are too young to swallow pills we give them liquid. Then we wonder why, as adults, they fall into addiction and self-destruction. The propensity to label children and place them on medications to treat or to cure is insane to me. I know the numbers are very high and that the numbers include tens of thousands of children under the age of one year. I am including a link here that I have not independently researched. Please look at it for perspective, but again, do you own research and draw your own conclusions. https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/