The Children Money Can Buy

by Anne Moody

  I closed Darcy’s case a few weeks later. I’m sure life continued to be hard for her, but she never contacted me again, the kids didn’t come back into foster care—and my tendency to overinvolve myself was off to a flying start.

  * * *

  The kids on my caseload ranged from newborn to eighteen years old. Most were Caucasian, about one-fifth were African American, Hispanic, or of mixed racial heritage, and a few were Native American. This was a fairly accurate representation of the general population in that part of Michigan at the time. A few of the kids had significant developmental delays or mental health concerns, and most of the kids had been traumatized, first by the abuse or neglect that had brought them into foster care, and then by the separation from their families and their familiar lives. There were kids who (rightfully) raged against a world that had treated them so cruelly, and there were other kids who had given up on that approach and kept a low (and depressed) profile. Staying under the radar may have been an effective way of coexisting with their birth parents, and it was certainly a reasonable approach to the unknowns of living in a foster home.

  There was also a group of kids who had figured out that if they worked extra hard at being charming and affectionate, the world was likely to treat them more kindly. These kids were usually upbeat and compliant, and they made life easy for the adults in their lives. They made life easy for their caseworker, too, until she started thinking about what was behind all that people-pleasing behavior, which was most likely the child’s assumption that he was somehow in control of/to blame for the way other people treated and mistreated him. It was hard not to envision a miserable future for a child with such damaged self-esteem and such a finely honed ability to manipulate others. These qualities would ultimately not serve him, or the people who were drawn to him, well.

  I usually had between fifty-five and sixty-five children at a time on my caseload. There were a few sibling groups, which brought the total number of cases down a little, but still there were too many children for me to be able to establish any sort of meaningful connection with most of them. Although I spent a lot of time on their behalf, I didn’t spend a lot of actual time with the babies and little kids on my caseload except when I was transporting them to visits with their parents or other appointments. They were too young to know who I was or to care about my role in their lives anyway. It was the older kids who commanded the greatest amount of my in-person time. Talking with them was rarely a formalized activity but was sneaked in around the edges of other things that needed to be done, such as monthly trips to the dentist. If we didn’t have the excuse of an appointment, I would suggest that we run an errand or go get a treat, and would always take back roads to prolong the trip. This one-on-one time was perfect for the sort of low-pressure conversation that the kids needed, and they were able to express themselves in ways they wouldn’t have if we had been sitting together in a quiet room.

  I remember a detailed fashion critique by a teenaged girl as we drove through the University of Michigan campus one day. She was extremely scornful of the ripped jeans and flannel shirts she saw everywhere and said the students looked like they belonged in the woods. She made it clear that her own standards of dress would never allow her to look so ragged and foolish. Of course we both knew that she had just moved into a new foster home with one garbage bag carrying all her meager possessions. Her clothes may not have been flannel, but they were definitely ragged. (Not once did I see that girl looking foolish, though.)

  At first I was surprised by her strong feelings, but it made perfect sense that this girl, who had so little, would try to elevate her own standing in the all-important world of fashion by criticizing someone else’s style. Disparaging others is what people, especially fourteen-year-old girls, do when they feel inadequate. I told her that the college kids thought they looked terrific; she feigned disbelief, and we didn’t delve into the deeper meaning of her comments that day.

  The subject of fashion came up again a few months later, though—in a big way. Every year, the foster care department would receive wrapped Christmas presents for the caseworkers to distribute to the children on our caseloads. Each gift would have a tag, sometimes with the name of the specific item (e.g., baseball) and sometimes saying something like “clothing, girl, size 10.” We were supposed to gather together a couple things for each child so that the foster parents wouldn’t be overburdened. I sure wish I had that first Christmas as a caseworker to do over again. I followed the rules and sought out the appropriately labeled packages, but it was a disaster. My fashion-loving teenager opened up a size large cotton housedress (in a box labeled “clothing, girl, size 10”) and an orange-and-gray striped knit hat and muffler made of yarn so stiff and thick that they could stand up on their own (in a box labeled “hat and scarf, girl”). Not only were the gifts completely unsuited to her taste (or pretty much anyone’s taste), but they screamed “I have no idea who you are.” A horrible message for a gift to give, but especially sad when the recipient is a child who is already plenty worried about being unknown and unloved. We were able to laugh together about the ugly clothes later, but I know she wasn’t laughing on Christmas morning.

  The following year we revamped the whole Christmas present system. We got specific information from the foster parents about exactly which items the kids were hoping for, and we did all the wrapping ourselves in order to ensure that there were no mix-ups in delivery. Sometimes it seemed weird when kids who had never been able to have expensive things became quite specifically demanding. For example, a kid without a winter jacket wouldn’t just put “warm jacket” on his list but would name the precise jacket (designer, store, size, color, and often, team name), and anything else would be a disappointment—just as it would be for the lucky kids in regular families. Things didn’t always work out, and kids didn’t always get exactly what they wished for (also just as in regular families), but Christmas in our department was no longer a time when people cleared out their closets or tossed their leftover yarn supply in our direction. The kids in foster care were just as materialistic as most kids are, and they enjoyed their presents for what they were. More importantly, they enjoyed what the presents represented: that there were people paying attention to them as individuals rather than as random “needy children” who were expected to feel unquestioning gratitude for anything they were given.

  Children who have been abused and neglected and have come into the foster care system often haven’t had an opportunity to develop a normal sense of self-worth. Sometimes the chaos of their early lives made it impossible for the children I knew to establish reliable bonds with their parents or other caregivers, and they continued to struggle to form attachments or even meaningful connections with other people. More often, they did form strong (albeit troubled) bonds with their parents, but were then traumatized by abuse and by the separation brought on when they were removed from the home. Common sense suggests that children in this circumstance would learn to reject the abusive parent and quickly place their trust in someone—such as a good foster parent—who provided proper nurture, but I saw that happen only with children who were very young. Older children usually held on to the attachment to their parent no matter how serious the abuse or how long the separation had been. Sometimes the attachment had little to do with the actual parent or even the child’s whitewashed memories of the parent but was instead a fantasized version of how things should have been. With some kids, the worse the abuse, the stronger their need to deny it and to defend their parent. It makes perfect sense as a coping mechanism, especially for a child.

  The typical image of an abused or neglected child is of someone who is hurt, frightened, sad, confused, pitiful, and so on. Once the initial trauma surrounding removal from the parent’s home has subsided and the child is settled into a stable foster home, we revise our image a bit. Now we hope the description will include words like grateful, humble, cooperative, undemanding, and the ever-popular plucky. In other w
ords, we want this child to leave all the drama behind as soon as possible and take advantage of the opportunity she has been given to thrive.

  I had one girl on my caseload who embodied all the qualities of the deserving and ideal foster child. Alison was sixteen years old, and her mother was mentally ill and an alcoholic. By the time I met Alison, her mother was so volatile that it had become unsafe for Alison to remain at home. The situation was greatly complicated by the fact that Alison was pregnant, and there were apparently no relatives who could or would take care of her. So Alison came into foster care and had decided that since she didn’t think she was ready for parenthood, she would plan an adoption for her baby. Alison was only about five feet, two inches tall and, even in the later stages of pregnancy, was extremely delicate in appearance. She had long brown hair, big blue eyes, a gentle manner, and a face that was Madonna-esque.

  Things hadn’t been good at home for a long time, and Alison was, to a degree, used to taking charge of her own life. She was a straight-A student, well liked at school, and definitely had plans for the future, including college. The pregnancy had derailed all of that, and she had become dependent in ways that made her terribly uncomfortable since she absolutely hated to impose on others. One bright spot in all of this was Alison’s boyfriend, Chad, a classmate who was not the father of the baby. They had started dating before she realized she was pregnant, but unlike most young men in this situation, he remained supportive and didn’t end the relationship. Chad clearly adored Alison, but he was sixteen years old and did not have the support of his parents, who were understandably unhappy about the sudden drama in their son’s life. Chad wasn’t going to be able to contribute much in the way of practical assistance to Alison, but his friendship and emotional support were invaluable.

  Alison was living in a nice foster home, and the plan was for her to stay there, place the baby for adoption, and resume her life as a high school junior. She and Chad started attending the church that the foster family belonged to, and it wasn’t long before I was told that she had selected a family from the church to be the baby’s adoptive parents. Everything went along smoothly for a couple of months; then the baby was born, and Alison, who had received nothing in the way of unbiased decision-making counseling regarding her adoption decision, decided that she could not, after all, give up her child. I’m sure the prospective adoptive parents were devastated, but to everyone’s credit, it appeared that the entire church community rallied around Alison. She was instantly and fully supplied with baby clothing and equipment as well as offers for babysitting and other forms of assistance. Women gave her much-needed parenting information and advice, and Chad spent time with older men who provided him with lessons about fatherhood and responsibility. The fact that he wasn’t actually the baby’s father and that he and Alison had only been dating for about six months didn’t seem to be of much concern. Both teenagers, and baby Alex, were suddenly bathed in attention and approval. The only people who didn’t seem supportive were Alison’s and Chad’s parents. Alison’s mother’s condition didn’t improve, and Chad’s parents kept a careful distance from Alison and the baby. I’m sure early marriage and parenthood were not what they had envisioned for their son.

  Early marriage didn’t seem to be the answer for Alison, either. As long as she and the baby were on their own, they qualified for a subsidized apartment and enough other forms of assistance to be able to get along reasonably well. Alison was an amazingly relaxed and competent parent. I greatly admired her matter-of-fact attitude as she met the various demands of parenthood, all without complaint. In retrospect, she had to have been putting on a good show, but she never seemed exhausted or overwhelmed the way you expect new parents to be. She also never seemed resentful about the position she was in or angry with her mother or with the baby’s father, both of whom had effectively abandoned her. Mostly what Alison seemed to be was responsible and devoted to baby Alex, who was the picture of health and happiness and absolutely thrived in her love and care. My admiration for her grew even more after I became a parent myself and understood how truly remarkable it was that she managed everything so well as a sixteen-year-old who was on her own most of the time. She even managed to keep up with her schoolwork.

  I feel a little guilty using Alison as an example of what parenthood was like for a teenager in foster care. Her experience was by no means the norm. Much more typically, when a girl got pregnant, it was cause for enormous concern. Obviously there was concern for the girl and how parenthood would affect her future. There was also concern for the baby, whose mother was likely to have had either abusive or neglectful parenting herself and was unlikely to have had positive role models to emulate. This put both mother and baby in jeopardy. Hopefully the mother would agree to stay in foster care for a while longer so that she could receive practical and emotional support as well as a crash course in parenting. More likely, the girl would decide that she could now live on her own, with the help of the extra government assistance she now qualified for. Usually these young mothers were raising their babies on their own from the beginning and, tragically, were at increased risk of turning into the next generation of parents whose children would come to the attention of the child welfare system.

  4

  Foster Home Highs and Lows

  Jim and Kevin started arguing over toast. I told them how silly it was to argue over bread and asked them what they would do if Christ was sitting down at the table. Kevin seen the light and said he was sorry but our almighty Jim sat there and said he didn’t do anything wrong. And I said if he was so perfect and never did anything wrong then why has he been in so many different foster homes? He never batted an eyelash.—Anonymous Foster Mother

  It was rare in our office to terminate parental rights. Judges were willing to rule that a child was not safe at home for a given period of time, but generally stopped short of determining that the family situation was so hopeless that the parent/child relationship should be legally severed. This meant the caseworker was often put in the position of choosing either to risk a child’s safety by recommending that he return home to a dangerously inadequate parent or to recommend that he continue to live in a foster home that (as far as could be determined) was at least meeting his basic needs. My work in these situations in which children lingered in foster care year after year often involved managing what we called “long-term foster care”—something similar to a guardianship arrangement.

  Good foster homes were always in short supply, and there was no guarantee that I could maintain equilibrium in a foster child’s life for long, even when he or she was officially in a long-term foster home. This was particularly true during adolescence. Rather than cope with the problems that teenagers present, foster parents too often would ask that children be moved when they became teenagers. In some cases, it was because the child’s problems had become too severe for any family to handle, and some sort of residential care (such as a group home or treatment facility) was called for. But more often a family would ask to have a child moved after an episode of more or less normal teenage rebellion. The family had handled similar levels of defiance when the child was younger, but now they were looking down the road and worrying about not being able to control the child’s physical and sexual behavior. The foster care system, at least in those days, didn’t offer much incentive or reward to foster parents confronted with the exhausting struggles of troubled adolescents.

  It wasn’t unreasonable for foster parents to want some relief from these problems, but moving the children was likely to cause their behavior to worsen, particularly since there were few foster homes willing to take teenagers with behavior problems. When a long-term foster care situation was disrupted, the options for the child were bleak.

  I also came to learn that foster homes sometimes provided substandard care or, tragically, abused the children who were placed in them. And foster parents could be as devious as my official clients.

  One unfor
gettable foster mom came across as a model foster parent—in fact, she had received at least one Foster Parent of the Year award. She was always dressed and groomed like June Cleaver (of Leave It to Beaver fame), and she and her husband lived in a sprawling, immaculate home on about five acres outside the city. It seemed as though every time we visited to check on the children in her care, she was pulling something yummy out of the oven just as we arrived. We marveled at her and the serenity of her household, despite the fact that she always had at least two babies in her care. They were quiet babies.

  The babies were always napping no matter what time of day we visited. They would be awake and sitting up in their cribs when we went into their rooms with the foster mother to “wake” them. I didn’t have a baby from my caseload in her home, but I visited there a few times for another caseworker on maternity leave. I remember being led down a dark hall and into a dark room where a baby girl, who was about fourteen months old, was supposedly sleeping. Instead, she was sitting quietly in her crib and paid little attention to us as we entered the room. There was no crying—but there was also no sign of greeting or expectation. She did not jump to her feet, lift her arms to be picked up, or make a single sound. It was eerie; my first thought was that there must be something wrong with the baby. I mentioned what I had seen to my supervisor, Jim, and it turned out that another caseworker had similar concerns with this foster home. She and Jim started to make unannounced visits to the home, and it didn’t take long for them to figure out that there was virtually no time of day when the babies in this woman’s care weren’t confined to their cribs.