Nobody's Children: Abuse and Neglect, Foster Drift, and the Adoption Alternative

ISBN-13: 9780807023198 / Angielski / Miękka / 2000 / 304 str.

Elizabeth Bartholet

Opis

Nobody's Children is an intense look at child welfare policies on abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption. Elizabeth Bartholet, one of the nation's leading experts on family law, challenges the accepted orthodoxy that treats children as belonging to their kinship and their racial groups and that locks them into inadequate biological and foster homes. She asks us to apply the lessons learned from the battered women's movement as we look at battered children, and to question why family preservation ideology still reigns supreme when children rather than adult women are involved.

Bartholet asks us to take seriously the adoption option. She calls on the entire community to take responsibility for its children, to think of the children at risk of abuse and neglect as belonging to all of us, and to ensure that "Nobody's Children" become treasured members of somebody's family.

"An extraordinary book. Chilling, inspiring, and utterly convincing, it creates an ironclad case for the adoption solution."-Sylvia Ann Hewlett, coauthor of The War Against Parents"Bartholet sounds the alarm on the savage consequences the child welfare system has on so many children and challenges us to confront the reality that substance abuse . . . is the culprit in most cases of child abuse and neglect. Everyone who cares about our nations most vulnerable children should read this book."-Joseph A. Califano, Jr., president, The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University"Blood and race remain the over-riding factors in determining the future of suffering children. This should be required reading for those who look on adoption as the last resort."-Mary McGrory, Washington Post columnist"Bartholet is a passionate crusader on behalf of children, and brings to her subject vigorous, clear-headed prose and the moral authority of her professional dedication."-Ann-Janine Morey, Chicago Tribune"Bartholet issues a strong challenge to the child welfare system to facilitate adoption of children who have been abused and neglected.All people concerned about the healthy development of children should read Nobodys Children. I highly recommend it."-Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School"The way we treat abused and neglected children in this country remains a national scandal. Bartholet challenges the priority placed . . . on keeping battered or neglected children with their families or racial group, and makes a strong case for increased use of adoption."-Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum (ret.), author of the Multiethnic Placement Act"A disturbing look at how the lives of Americas modern-day orphans are sacrificed for the often unrealistic goal of keeping troubled families together. . . . The author makes her case intelligently, fearlessly, and exhaustively."-Kirkus ReviewsElizabeth Bartholet is a professor at Harvard Law School. Her first book, Family Bonds: Adoption, Infertility, and the New World of Child Reproduction, was called "brilliant . . . an intelligent and passionate exploration of the legal, racial, and psychological issues" by The New York Times Book Review. The mother of three boys, two of them adopted from Peru, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.