Raising government children : a history of foster care and the American welfare state / Catherine E. Rymph

Author: Rymph, Catherine E.
Published: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2017]
Copyright Date: ©2017
Physical Description: xiv, 252 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

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Contents

Into the family life of strangers : the origins of foster family care -- The New Deal, family security, and the emergence of a public child welfare system -- Helping America's orphans of war -- Providing love and care : foster parents as parents -- The hard-to-place child : family pathology, race, and poverty -- Compensated motherhood and the state : foster parents as workers -- Poverty, punishment, and public assistance : reorienting foster family care.

Summary

"In the 1930s, buoyed by the potential of the New Deal, child welfare reformers hoped to formalize and modernize their methods, partly through professional casework but more importantly through the loving care of temporary, substitute families. Today, however, the foster care system is widely criticized for failing the children and families it is intended to help. How did a vision of dignified services become virtually synonymous with the breakup of poor families and a disparaged form of "welfare" that stigmatizes the women who provide it, the children who receive it, and their families? Tracing the evolution of the modern American foster care system from its inception in the 1930s through the 1970s, Catherine Rymph argues that deeply gendered, domestic ideals, implicit assumptions about the relative value of poor children, and the complex public/private nature of American welfare provision fueled the cultural resistance to funding maternal and parental care. What emerged was a system of public social provision that was actually subsidized by foster families themselves, most of whom were concentrated toward the socioeconomic lower half, much like the children they served. Analyzing the ideas, debates, and policies surrounding foster care and foster parents' relationship to public warfare, Rymph reveals the framework for the building of the foster care system and draws out its implications for today's child support network"--Back cover.

Subject(s)

Genre(s)

History

ISBN

9781469635637 (hardcover alkaline paper)
1469635631 (hardcover alkaline paper)
9781469635644 (paperback alkaline paper)
146963564X (paperback alkaline paper)

Bibliography Note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-242) and index.

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