More than a decade ago, I wrote a column for The Imprint called “Donald Trump and the Child Savers. It’s Not a Band But They Sing the Same Song.” I began it this way:
Last month, author and political commentator Jeff Greenfield wrote an essay for Politico on the politics of fear – and how Donald Trump exploits it. He wrote:
History teaches us lessons of what can happen when genuine public fears are co-opted by the demagogues, fear-mongers and over-reactors. There was a reason to fear crime in the 1960s and 1970s, because violent crime in America was increasing by leaps and bounds, but that didn’t mean the only response [had to be] four decades of over-incarceration, driven by politicians’ fears of looking soft on crime. There was a reason to fear a Soviet espionage network looking for military secrets during a Cold War waged in the shadow of countless nuclear weapons, but that didn’t require McCarthyism as a response. There was a reason to fear where Al Qaeda might strike next after 19 men with box cutters killed 3,000 people in the heart of two great cities, but that didn’t mean we had to invade Iraq.
Let me add one to
Greenfield’s list: There is a reason to fear that a small number of parents are
brutally abusive and will do terrible things to innocent children if they are
not stopped. But that doesn’t mean we needed to create a system that puts
millions of children through frightening investigations every year, and casts
thousands of them into a chaotic system of foster care, traumatizing some of
them for life.
Of course, these horrors have nothing to do with actual rates of crime, nor the actual record of immigrants – who, documented or not, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
But Trump wants us so upset by the gruesome details of stories that are as rare as they are horrifying that we’ll lose sight of the facts, lose sight of the context and embrace his phony solutions. (And, of course, he argues that anyone who doesn’t embrace his phony solutions doesn’t care if people die gruesome deaths.)
Now consider the behavior of the child welfare fearmongers
in various statehouses, think tanks and college campuses. Have you noticed how
often their behavior is identical? Find a gruesome case of fatal child abuse.
Imply that it's common. Scapegoat efforts to keep families together – and
accuse anyone who disagrees of not caring if children die and/or wanting to
ignore fatalities.
And what has it gotten us over the past 50 years or so? Millions of children needlessly torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care. A child welfare surveillance state so huge that more than one-third of all children and more than half of Black children will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18. And almost always, it will be in response to a false report or a case in which poverty is confused with neglect.
What it does not get us is an end to the horrific and
extremely rare cases that this massive intrusion on families supposedly was
going to stop.
On the contrary, the horror stories are needles in a haystack. We’ve spent more than half a century making the haystack bigger, so it’s even harder to find the needles. What should be called the Donald Trump Fearmongering Approach to Child Welfare is making all children less safe.
Yet all we hear from the fearmongers are cries for more of
the same.
But wait, you might say. Don’t you also highlight horror stories? Yes. Often, our weekly news roundup ends with a section called The Horror Stories go in All Directions, followed by one or more examples of terrible things done to children in a foster home, an adoptive home, a group home or an institution.
The title explains why we do it. Nine years ago, I first offered the other side a mutual moratorium on the use of horror stories. But I’m not going to unilaterally disarm and allow the fearmongers to leave the impression that foster care, adoption, group homes and institutions are free of horrors of their own.
They haven’t taken me up on the mutual moratorium idea.
They can’t. Here’s why:
If we stopped pointing out horror stories, here’s what else we would have to make the case for curbing the child welfare surveillance state and ending needless foster care:
● The mass of research showing that, in typical cases, not the horror stories, children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children thrown into foster care. That research includes the stunning study from Sweden showing that, under these circumstances, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more likely to die.
● The mass of research showing high rates of abuse in foster homes and even higher rates of abuse in group homes and institutions.
● The mass of research showing that poverty is routinely confused with neglect.
● The mass of research showing even small amounts of additional cash can go a long way toward curbing not only what agencies call “neglect” but even cases of serious abuse.
If the Trump-style fearmongers in “child welfare” had to stop pointing out horror stories to make the case for doing more of what has failed for decades, here’s what else they would have to make their case: