THE ILLUSION OF CARING: Children in Foster Care

Our 300,000 children currently in foster care are ""orphans of the living"" -- cut off from their families but ineligible for adoption, they remain ""in limbo,"" drifting from temporary home to temporary home, discouraged from developing attachments, ignored even by the social worker until the placement fails, which it often does. Geiser is firm in calculating the psychological price that these victims almost always pay: ""demoralized and depersonalized,"" they hate themselves, their natural parents (whose character flaws they nevertheless unfailingly perpetuate) and ultimately the foster family whose best efforts go in vain. Marked as second-class individuals, they fail at school, rarely grow beyond their emotional age when first separated from their families, always ""missing someone who never said goodbye."" Idolizing the home, we provide no education in family living; claiming the be ""child centered,"" we abuse them (spanking only tells a child that ""it is right for big people to hit little people""), leave them at the mercy of their parents' poverty and illness. Geiser demands day-care centers, national health, child allowances and child hotels as well as a Child Defender and a Bill of Rights. Simple truths that are still resisted by those with the power to help.