If I Wasn’t Poor . . .

Poverty and homelessness are associated with the break-up of families. A number of studies have documented that children in families who experience homelessness frequently become separated from their parents.
~ National Institutes of Health Study

From LINK>Human Rights Watch –
“If I Wasn’t Poor, I Wouldn’t Be Unfit”

It has been more than two years since Adaline Stephens’ six children were removed from her care and placed in the foster system. Her nightmare began on a night like any other. Her 9-year-old son, Elijah, was dancing in the kitchen and slipped on some water, injuring his hip. “I rushed him to the emergency room when he got hurt,” Adaline said. “The doctors asked me questions, and I told them everything. I trusted them to help him.” Adaline was shocked when she learned that her son’s medical providers reported her to child protective services for suspected abuse, triggering a cascade of state interventions that irreparably harmed her children and their family bond.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) launched an investigation. A caseworker visited the children’s school and pulled them from class to question them, came to the home unannounced, and randomly strip searched the children, ages 1, 4, 7, 9, and 10, to check their bodies for signs of abuse. Adaline said these visits were so frightening for her children that her youngest child began screaming every time she saw anyone with a badge.

Adaline was required to take a drug test, a requirement often—and disproportionally—imposed on Black mothers. She has scoliosis and spina bifida. Her doctor prescribed Percocet for the pain, but it was damaging her liver and stomach lining. “I made the decision to change to medical marijuana, which was better for my health,” she said. She tested positive for THC (the active substance in marijuana, and the chemical responsible for most of its psychological effects). “They stated that my marijuana usage rendered me incapable of providing 24-hour care to my children,” she said.

Adaline knew what was at stake. She was removed from her own parents’ care as a child and grew up in the foster system. Afraid that her children would be taken from her, Adaline agreed to six months of follow-up with the caseworker, weekly drug testing, and parenting classes, in exchange for keeping her children home with her.

In the meantime, Adaline gave birth to her youngest child. The birth was complicated because of her spinal conditions, and she had to use a wheelchair and walker for two months. During that time, she rescheduled one of Elijah’s follow-up appointments. Adaline said DCFS told her they found bed bugs in a couch and holes in the walls in of her home. (Blogger’s note – it is like they look for any excuse . . .)

Days before her case was set to be reviewed, Adaline was informed that a judge had ordered the children be removed from her custody due to the condition of the home and because she rescheduled her son’s appointment.

Her children, including her infant son, were removed from her care, separated from each other, and placed in foster homes. Four of the six children have experienced abuse in the foster system and are coping with serious mental health impacts, Adaline said. One of her sons had to be admitted to a mental health facility for inpatient care. The children remain in the foster system at time of writing, and Adaline is fighting to get them back.

“This situation has caused me so much pain, anger, and trauma from the separation from my children,” she said. “I just want my purpose back. I knew I wanted to be a mother and that’s all I ever knew how to do. Please help me and my kids.”

The truth is – One in three children in the United States will be part of a child welfare investigation by age 18. Every three minutes a child is removed from their home and placed in the foster system. Black children are almost twice as likely to experience investigations as white children and are more likely to be separated from their families. As a result, more than 200,000 children enter the foster system each year.

While the US child welfare system’s stated purpose is to improve child safety, permanency and well-being, and child welfare workers believe they are defending children’s rights to health and life, but too often system interventions too often unnecessarily disrupt family integrity and cause harm to the very children they aim to protect.

This Really Should Be Illegal

A mom’s story –

When I was 15 and found myself pregnant and no idea really what was gonna happen. I mean I knew but was naive at that age. I was thinking about adoption. My mom called catholic services to see where to go from there. At that age, I thought my mom knew best. Anyway about a week later I was driven 1 1/2 hours away to a new home with the hopeful adoptive parents. They set me up with state aid and monitored everything I put in my body food wise. At 15, I was scared and didn’t know what was normal and not normal. I stayed for about a month. When I told them I wanted to go home, I had to promise to still give them my baby or I don’t think they would of brought me back. I was screamed at for the entire hour and half drive back home. The day I came home from delivering my baby, the social worker was sitting in my living room asking me to sign the papers to give this couple my baby. I hadn’t brought her home yet. When I said I was keeping her. I was sternly talked to about how I can’t parent at my age and was making a huge mistake. The hospital even put me on a separate floor, so I would not to get attached. That whole experience was very traumatic. That baby girl is now 30 and about to graduate college on the dean’s list. She has 2 baby girls that I wouldn’t of known. I don’t think hopeful adoptive parents should be able to put you in their home to browbeat and bully you into letting them keep your baby. It really should be against the law.

Speak Your Truth

I got a blog notification from LINK> Tony Corsentino, an adoptee that I now am glad to be able to read thoughts from. He notes people whose lives begin with severance and secrecy need to speak their truth. He goes on to say that secrecy in adoption makes one’s story into contested property, where truthseeking, not to mention truth speaking, can be received as betrayal.

He says the nearly universal expectation is that adopted people are grateful for their adoption—grateful to their adoptive families, grateful for a system that rescues infants and children from perilous circumstances, from abusive homes, from orphanhood. That expectation imputes a form of dependence to adopted people: that of being beholden to their adopters, and to the system that placed them in their adopters’ families.

Speaking one’s truth is an act of self-emancipation.

Often when an adopted person speaks of being adopted as a less than positive experience, their truth is labeled a “poor adoption experience.” The implication is that questioning the justification for severing a child from their original family must come out of the aftermath of a traumatic experience.

When the question is one of rights, the justification for denying people control over their bodies, it is the point. Storytelling is essential to moral argument. He goes on to note – this is true of adopted people who recount their experiences with adoption. I do not know whether to call my own adoption experience “positive” or “negative” overall. I was taken from my mother and given to people who did and do love and care for me. That’s a “positive,” surely.

Regarding his own search, he says “I did not find my birth parents until the fifth decade of my life.” In my own roots search, I was well into my sixties before I knew anything about my genetic and biological origins as regards my original grandparents. My own parents died knowing nothing beyond their names at birth and some sketchy information about one or both parents’ names.

So, Tony notes – “I have reflected on all those factors—the barriers adopted people face in trying to reclaim their original identities, their sense of their place in the world, their cultural and ethnic roots, their family health histories—and I see no compelling moral justification for those barriers’ existence. Certainly no justification for the lack of support for adopted people who wish to overcome those barriers.” I agree. During my own search, it was like repeating dashing my head against a concrete wall.

The reason why individual trauma and harm matter in the stories adoptees tell is it forces other people to ask themselves whether it really had to be that way. Adoption is the legally sanctioned erasure of the child’s original identity.

Adoptees tell their stories because they believe that they have insights about adoption that non-adopted people will at least find intelligible. Even while acknowledging that it is impossible for people who have not lived severed aka adopted lives to truly understand. As the stories pile up, one has to admit that the harms are not all in one adoptee’s head but are a universal experience among them as a whole.