The Luck Lottery

The Luck Lottery

This past weekend, Beth Macy wrote a powerful op-ed in the New York Times, telling the story of an opioid user’s descent into addiction and ultimate death from an overdose.  Her words at the end of the story have been ringing in my ears since I read them:

“It occurred to me that only in death are those who are addicted seen as victims, as patients who might have been worthy of medical care.”

Upon reading these words, my mind immediately turned to how we treat parents in child welfare cases and our inability to see them as victims of trauma, worthy of our care.  The National Child Traumatic Stress Network reports that “many birth parents involved with the child welfare system have their own histories of child and/or adult trauma.”  I’ve seen this in my own work.  Nearly every one of my parent clients was a victim of abuse, spent time in foster care, was adopted, or has mental health challenges.  The list could go on and on.  Never have I had a case in which the parent was unscathed before he or she encountered the system.

Yet once a petition is filed against parents, we quickly forget about their trauma, which likely played a significant role in choices they made.  Instead, we label them as respondents, blame them for their actions, shift our focus entirely to their children, and ignore the reality that they too are victims whose trauma must be addressed.  By ignoring their trauma, we undermine our efforts to reunify the family.

We even do this in cases involving youth raised by the foster care system, who age out of care and then have their own children.  The dismal outcomes for these youth are well documented, including high rates of homelessness, unemployment, and incarceration.  Unsurprisingly, when these young adults have their own children, this instability often results in involvement with foster care. But it is striking that when these youth re-enter the system as parents, we quickly forget about what they experienced in foster care, and our role in creating the family’s predicament.  Despite our systemic failure to provide a stable living environment for older youth in foster care, we are quick to transfer blame to the new parent for failing to provide a stable living environment for the child.      

Ironically, the times during which the system truly seems to acknowledge the pain a parent is experiencing occurs when that parent is releasing rights to the child.  When that happens, an adoption worker carefully and slowly counsels her about her options.  The court meticulously repeats the process, making sure that the parent feels heard before she permanently gives up her rights.  Whenever I watch this process, I am overcome with sadness, thinking of all of the moments that led to this tragedy and the hurt a parent must be feeling.  Macy’s words ring true:  only at the end do we see these adults as victims.

So why does this happen?  Why are we unable to recognize the pain that parents have endured?  This occurs – I believe – because we continue to think of parents in child welfare cases as “the other” – bad people who have chosen to make the decision to harm their children, decisions we would never make.  Until we reject this false notion – that those parents are any different than us – we will continue to struggle in our work.  Many of us would make the same exact choices as these parents if we experienced their lives.    

The words of Father Greg Boyle – founder of Homeboy Industries –  have helped me think about the similarities between me and my clients.  In his most recent book, Barking to the Choir, he cites three reasons why his life ended up differently than the lives of the ex-gang members he serves:  1) luck; 2) the absence of trauma in his childhood; and 3) the lack of a mental illness.  In other words, luck, luck and more luck.

In truth, if you are reading this entry, you’ve likely won the luck lottery, which is why you’re not homeless, in a gang, trying to cross the border or involved in a child welfare case.  Luck, and little else explains why you won.  The parents we encounter in child welfare cases didn’t fare as well.  So as Father Boyle suggests in his book, rather than stand in judgment of how these individuals carry their burdens, we should stand in awe of them.  For the burdens life has imposed on them would overwhelm any of us. 

Once we recognize this and understand the hardships these families experience every day, let us lend them a helping hand before it is too late.