She reportedly “fell in love” with her foster baby – but only until she found out the state wouldn’t pay for childcare

Indiana State Capitol (Photo by Warren LeMay)

The foster mother at the center of this story probably does an excellent job caring for children. She made a reasonable financial calculation concerning her real family. The point of this post is not to criticize her or her decision. It is to note the difference between how she regards that real family and the foster children she does and does not take in, and to highlight the usual general “child welfare” system hypocrisy. So I won’t name her or link to the story in question. Since this was essentially your typical story about a saintly foster mother, when I get to her story toward the end of this post, I’ll just call her “Saintly Foster Mom.” 

UPDATE, MAY 14: And compare Saintly Foster Mom to the aunt in this story from USA Today, and consider what it really means to "fall in love" with a child. 

For a short time, Indiana had a commendable, robust childcare subsidy program for low-income families – well, mostly low-income families. One group of middle-class or even affluent families not only was in on it, they were at the front of the line: foster parents.  After all, you can’t very well expect foster parents who proclaim their enormous love for the children in their care and who already get a monthly payment from the state to actually pay for their foster children’s childcare, can you? 

Indiana funded this with $1 billion in federal aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. But when the aid expired, the state stopped giving out new vouchers and set up a waitlist. 

Since then, lawmakers have bent over backwards to accommodate middle-class foster parents. They passed a law setting aside 200 vouchers just for foster parents. And now that the state is moving money from other agencies to make more vouchers available, foster parents get to cut to the head of the line. 

In other words, children who might have been taken away because of “lack of supervision” charges, because their parents couldn’t afford childcare, are placed with middle-class foster parents – who get childcare for the same children, paid for by the state. 

We don’t know how many children in Indiana are taken away due, in whole or in part, to lack of supervision. But we do know that Indiana tears apart families at a rate nearly triple the national average, higher than all but five other states. And see the box below for what else we know about Indiana’s status as an extreme outlier for child removal, and its confusion of poverty with neglect. 

Keep in mind that Indiana foster parents already get a minimum of about $28-per-day-per-child. The story about Saintly Foster Mom points out that this covers about 69% of the average cost of childcare. On the other hand, that $28-per-day-per-child is tax-free. There’s also a $200 initial clothing allowance, a “personal allowance” of up to $300 per year, and annual $50 checks for birthday and holiday presents. After all, you wouldn’t want a foster parent to have to pay for their foster child’s own birthday present, would you? 

So now, consider how the story about Saintly Foster Mom begins: 

[Saintly Foster Mom] has welcomed nearly 40 children into her home in the past decade. Some were long-term foster placements, others were emergency or short-term stays. She and her husband focus on giving these kids a sense of stability and safety. 

In her home, there are no iPads or Netflix accounts. Instead, there are stacks of books, like "Goodnight Moon," used to bridge developmental gaps for children who arrive only knowing a few words. To [SFM], fostering is a lifelong ministry. 

“I'm passionate about children and just focusing on one child at a time, just helping whatever child can come into our home for the time period that's given,” said [SFM], who fostered four infants and toddlers for long-term stays. 

But [Saintly Foster Mom], who owns a small business with her husband and has three biological children, said her calling is at a standstill. She recently made the difficult decision to turn down an infant she had already fallen in love with while providing short-term care. The reason was the lack of a child care voucher. 

No one should begrudge this foster parent her decision. It’s entirely reasonable to consider the financial consequences of taking in a foster child for yourself and your own children. Doing so does not mean a foster parent is “only in it for the money.” But please, news organizations, spare us the treacle about foster parents “falling in love” with children – when they’ll only take them if they can get a childcare subsidy over and above their monthly pay.  And just once, news organizations, how about asking lawmakers why middle-class foster parents get to skip to the head of the line ahead of low-income birth families. 

THE CONTEXT: FAMILY POLICING IN INDIANA

● Nationwide, 37% of children will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18.  In Indiana, it’s 58%.  Nationwide, 53% of Black children will have to endure this trauma. In Indiana, it’s 79% - the highest rate in America. 

● In any given year, among all children, Indiana takes them from their homes at a rate more than two-and-a-half times the national average, even when rates of family poverty are factored in. 

● When going up against this family police juggernaut, families often are almost literally defense-less – because their lawyers often have so little time and so many clients. Many Indiana counties want to keep it that way. One in five actually turns down federal funds to improve representation for parents and also for children. One county court administrator explained that county’s refusal this way: “[T]he system we have works well.” So families often have no one who will, for example, get them a childcare subsidy so they can get back the children taken due to “lack of supervision.”

None of this is because Indiana is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than the national average.  In fact, in Indiana in 2025, 86% of the time, when children were thrown into foster care, their parents were not even accused of physical or sexual abuse. Forty-two percent of the time, there wasn’t even an allegation of any form of drug or alcohol abuse. As many children were taken away because of “inadequate housing” than because of physical and sexual abuse combined.

Alexis Hutchinson, foster care and the perils of “deployment”

    By now the story of U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson has made it all the way up the media food chain. Ordered to Afghanistan, she initially planned to leave her infant son with her mother. But her mother already had three sick relatives to care for and found she couldn't cope with an infant as well.

Hutchinson's lawyer said the Army's response was, in effect: Too bad. You're going to Afghanistan, and if you can't find anything else, your son is going to foster care. So Hutchinson didn't show up for deployment. She was arrested and, for two days, the boy was in foster care. He's now reportedly with his grandmother for the time being.

    This is not the first case raising similar issues. But it may be the first since the explosion in social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. And that may explain how, in about 72 hours, the story made it from the alternative Inter Press Service, which first broke it, to the Associated Press, to more than 400 news outlets around the world.

    It is encouraging to read how many people understand how enormously harmful it is to an infant to throw him into foster care under such circumstances. (I particularly like the tweet from someone who suggested the Army have a "take your child to war" day.) People get that mom did not brutalize this child or starve him or torture him; she simply didn't have someone to take care of him.

    But the only thing unusual about this case is the fact that this single mom's job was about to be moved to Afghanistan. There are, in fact, thousands of children of civilian parents trapped in foster care when their parents didn't abuse them or neglect them either. Many of these parents, mostly single mothers – have what amounts to the same problem as Spec. Hutchinson.

    These are the mothers who are told: "We don't care if your child is sick, show up for work or you're fired." Mom knows if she's fired, she won't be able to pay the rent. She'll be homeless and child protective services can take the child because of lack of housing. So mom shows up for work. Someone calls child protective services. The child is taken away on a "lack of supervision" charge.

    Indeed, in many communities, "lack of supervision" is the single largest category for "substantiated" allegations of maltreatment. Sometimes, of course, that's entirely the parent's fault – maybe she left a child home alone to party, or do drugs, or all those other stereotypes that leap to mind about parents who lose their children to foster care.

But often, it's a mother whose child was sick, or who couldn't afford child care, or who couldn't get such care because she works odd hours. They may be mothers like Lillian Lucas-Dixon, whose story was discussed in previous posts to this Blog. Her seven-year-old son was held in foster care for months because she had to leave him home alone for an hour to get to her job before an adult sibling could get there to babysit. "My choice was, do I lose my job or stay home with my son?" Lucas-Dixon, told the New York Daily News.

Typically, we hear about "lack of supervision" cases only when the worst happens, and only rarely are the stories told with the sensitivity shown in this New York Times story.

    So I hope those who understand how wrong it was to subject Spec. Hutchinson's infant son to foster care for even two days will think about how many thousands of other children are trapped in foster care right now, while their mothers are "deployed" to their jobs here at home.