Fostered Voices: Narratives of U.S. Foster Care

Abstract

Critiques of the U.S. foster care system as “broken” span multiple disciplines, including journalism, social work, sociology, psychology, and legal studies. Foster care “brokenness” is poorly defined in these critiques but generally refers to how policies and practices fail to adequately help and support people involved with the foster care system. These disciplines approach understanding “brokenness” via a single problem (e.g., specific policies, inadequate prevention programs, family and community deficits) or measures of “outcomes” (e.g., the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline, low educational attainment for fostered youth, drug abuse). This study applied anthropological methods and theories to the problem of the system’s “brokenness.” In particular, I used participant observation, semi-structured interviews, qualitative surveys, and media and historical analyses to examine foster care as a social, political, economic, and hierarchical institution comprised of the subjects of foster care, namely fostered youth, their kin, foster parents, and foster care professionals. I conducted data collection for 46 months and relied on two fieldsites: a geographic expanse of urban and rural South Texas consisting of courts, community meetings, non-profit foster care organizations, foster care training sites, and private homes, and a digital, qualitative survey with respondents across the U.S. The local South Texas fieldsite and digital field together allowed me to collect 101 narratives of foster care. A holistic anthropological approach revealed that the premise that foster care is “broken” is flawed. The assertion of “brokenness” presumes the primary goal of foster care is to help and support families and children. Exploring what the foster care system actually does for and to the families, youth, foster parents, and professionals involved with the institution made clear that the system’s most basic function is to shape, control and reform its subjects into compliant neoliberal citizens. Media analysis demonstrates how persistent meta-narratives of foster care obscure the production of structural inequalities. A historical review illuminates how foster care has always been primarily a system for managing impoverished people, rather than a system for aiding families or protecting children. Ethnographic data elucidates how well-meaning and kind judges, social workers, and foster parents become unwitting participants in structural violence that subjugates kin and fostered youth and limits their resistance.