Review by Choice Review
Nobody's Children is a searing indictment of the American foster care system. Bartholet (Harvard Law School) analyzes the ideology of the social welfare establishment and of the federal laws that have been enacted to support foster care. The core of that ideology, she argues, is the preservation of birth families who are in crisis. Although this may be a laudable goal in theory, in practice it has been a disaster for the children involved. Returning them to their dysfunctional families or extended kin can literally be a death sentence, or at best--after a short abusive stay, typically with a drug-addicted single mother--they return to foster care. Bartholet's primary solution to the problem of the foster care system is that social workers and the legal system must abandon the goal of preserving families of origin and become advocates for adoption. If birth parents take drugs and abuse their children, the state should quickly step in, terminate parental rights, and place the children with adoptive parents. This is a controversial, eye-opening book that should be read by child welfare professionals, as well as anyone concerned with the high number of children in foster care. All libraries. E. W. Carp; Pacific Lutheran University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
The book's jacket calls this an "intense look at child welfare policies on abuse and neglect." Precisely. Bartholet's subject is too weighty for casual reading and cannot be easily digested, but it does not falter in its criticisms of American child welfare policy. Examining legislation from all parts of the United States, Bartholet questions why "family preservation ideology still reigns supreme when children rather than adult women are involved." The reader is left with a multitude of questions and concerns about the way U.S. adoption policy is currently working, questions that are catalysts for invoking the changes that Bartholet espouses. Clear and consistent, this is recommended for public and academic libraries.ÄSheila Devaney, North Carolina State Univ. Libs., Raleigh (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A disturbing look at how the lives of 'America's modern-day orphans' are sacrificed for the often unrealistic goal of keeping troubled families together. Bartholet (Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting, 1993), an expert on family law and an adoptive mother herself, traces the historical, political, and cultural reasons why battered and neglected children are far more likely to spend years in 'foster limbo,' or be sent back to abusive homes, than to be adopted by loving families. The author charges that despite recent legislation that bars race as a factor, everyone from private foundation administrators to judges, lawyers, and bureaucrats continues to be guided by the notion that children should be cared for by relatives, or adopted by families who look like them. Back in 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers denounced transracial adoption as a form of 'racial genocide.' Though 'race-matching policies have gone underground' since then, Bartholet believes they resurface in criteria like 'kinship' and 'cultural competence.' Because other relatives may not be up to the task of parenting, and because there are not enough minority families to adopt all the children who need them, the author asserts that race-matching essentially condemns many youngsters to lasting physical, cognitive, and emotional damage. Whereas wife beaters are treated like criminals, child abusers, often plagued by poverty and substance abuse, tend to be seen as victims themselves. Bartholet expresses sympathy for their plight but demands that social workers stop using precious child-welfare resources to prop up deeply disturbed families. 'What matters,' she insists, 'is that the children get into homes where they can thrive.' She also suggests, somewhat unrealistically, that the state could take a proactive role in reducing child abuse by instituting 'universal visitation' of all families before and after birth. The author makes her case intelligently, fearlessly, and exhaustively. Curiously, since her subject matter is so wrenching, Bartholet's writing lacks emotional power. Nobody's Children ultimately appeals not to the heart, but to the head.
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