Nobody's Children

by BARTHOLET, ELIZABETH

• ISBN13: 9780807023198
• ISBN10: 0807023191
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2000-11-17
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

Nobody's Children is an intense look at child welfare policies on abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption. Elizabeth Bartholet, one of the nation's leading experts on family law, challenges the accepted orthodoxy that treats children as belonging to their kinship and their racial groups and that locks them into inadequate biological and foster homes. She asks us to apply the lessons learned from the battered women's movement as we look at battered children, and to question why family preservation ideology still reigns supreme when children rather than adult women are involved.

Bartholet asks us to take seriously the adoption option. She calls on the entire community to take responsibility for its children, to think of the children at risk of abuse and neglect as belonging to all of us, and to ensure that "Nobody's Children" become treasured members of somebody's family.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Bartholet, author of Family Bonds (Beacon / 2803-7 / $17.00 pb), has been a professor at Harvard Law School since 1977. She writes, lectures, and consults widely on issues involving child welfare, adoption, and reproductive technology. The mother of three boys, two of them adopted from Peru, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(2)
Kinship and Community	2	(2)
The Race/Class Problem	4	(3)
Blood Bias and Family Autonomy Politics	7	(1)
Two Stories of a Family at Risk for Child Maltreatment	8	(14)
New Directions for the Twenty-first Century?	22	(11)
HISTORY AND POLITICS
The Inherited Tradition: Parenting Rights and State Wrongs	33	(11)
Autonomous Families	33	(5)
Family Preservation Policies and Practices	38	(6)
The Politics	44	(15)
The Left-Right Coalition: An Unholy Alliance?	44	(6)
Lessons From the Battered Women's Movement	50	(4)
Politics for the Future	54	(5)
THE PROBLEM
Modern-Day Orphans	59	(39)
Abuse and Neglect	61	(6)
Substance Abuse: At the Heart of the Problem	67	(14)
Foster and Institutional Care	81	(14)
The Impact on Children	95	(3)
Underintervention Vs. Overintervention	98	(15)
THE ONGOING TRADITION
Traditional Programs Weather the Storm	113	(28)
Family Preservation in Its Infinite Variety	113	(10)
Community Preservation: Race Matching and Related Policies	123	(18)
``New'' Programs Promote Traditional Ideas	141	(22)
Family Group Decision Making	142	(4)
Community Partnerships	146	(8)
The New Permanency Movement	154	(9)
PROMISING NEW DIRECTIONS AND TRADITIONAL PITFALLS
Intervening Early with Home Visitation	163	(13)
The Promise	165	(4)
Some Pitfalls	169	(7)
Taking Adoption Seriously	176	(31)
The Promise	176	(10)
Promising Initiatives of the Day	186	(6)
Some Pitfalls	192	(11)
Radical Revolution or Modest Revisionism?	203	(4)
CONFRONTING THE CHALLENGING ISSUES
Substance Abuse	207	(26)
The Problem	207	(1)
The Traditional System's Response	208	(4)
The Harm to Children	212	(5)
The Future: Pitfalls and Promise	217	(16)
Race, Poverty, and Historic Injustice	233	(12)
The Connection with Child Maltreatment	233	(2)
Exploitation Stories of the Twentieth Century	235	(3)
Outlines of a New Story	238	(7)
Notes	245	(48)
Index	293	(10)
Acknowledgments	303