[psynister]

It's disheartening to see such drastic disparities between foster kids and their peers in terms of both education and incarceration rates. It really highlights just how important having a stable home life is to shaping the future outcomes for kids and how big of a disadvantage it is for those who don't have this privilege. Sad that we live in a society where we can't provide a healthy, stable environment so many kids.

[Sevii]

The way foster care works children will be placed with foster parents for a few years, then be returned to their parents, then be placed back in foster care with a different family, over and over again. The system is not setup to prioritize a stable environment. The reality is that to provide a healthy stable environment for these kids, we would have to effectively eliminate their parents from their lives. We'd basically have to say, "It's great you are off drugs and have a house and job now, but you don't get to have your kids back ever because they need stability". In general we prioritize getting kids back with their families over a healthy or stable environment.

[em-bee]

the problem is that children need both. a stable environment and a good relationship to their parents. therefore, if the parents are the cause of the instability, it's actually the parents who need help, therapy and what not. the failure in the current system is not providing that help.

so what we really need is a system where parents can develop a good relationship with their children, while having the support to build that stable environment.

i have seen an example in germany where the parents and kids live together in a form of supervised housing, where the family is not on their own but where multiple families live together with one or more socialworkers supporting them, making sure that things do not go out of hand and the parents can learn what a stable environment is (because most likely they didn't have a stable environment when they grew up themselves, so they have no experience to draw on)

[g-b-r]

That's dangerous though, there have been cases of widespread unjustified foster care placements

[sokoloff]

Not to mention making an already gut-wrenching decision (to place your own child into the foster system) even more difficult if it's perceived to be a one-way door.

[cool_dude85]

I think this may be different stae to state. Here you cannot just place your kid in foster care, they need to meet certain criteria e.g. they are abused or neglected. I guess you could purposefully neglect your kid but there are legal risks there for sure.

The way you can choose to "place" your kid in foster care is to voluntarily terminate your parental rights, which is outside of very rare circumstances a one-way trip. Regardless it is still done both for medical reasons and inability to deal with behaviors.

[em-bee]

couldn't you do it privately? find a family who is willing to take care of your kids for a while without getting any government agency involved?

[cool_dude85]

Yes, it's pretty common. The downside to these kinds of arrangements is that the family potentially is not able to do a lot for the kid. If the doctor or the school system decides to ask for any paperwork you're not technically able to take the kid to the doctor, make educational choices, etc.

[sokoloff]

It's not inaccurate to categorize them as "foster kids", but I think it risks putting too much emphasis on the wrong part of the root of the problem, just like thinking of people as "level 1 trauma center patients" rather than "car crash victims", "shooting victims", or "workplace accident victims".

When we see poor outcomes from trauma centers, we don't exclusively focus on better trauma medicine to improve per-patient outcomes; we also take steps aimed at reducing the number of patients created to improve society-wide outcomes.

Underlying every foster kid is some kind of failed original/default family situation. Improving the outcomes of the set of all children may have less to do with improving the foster machine and more to do with changing the dynamics that feed so many children into the gears of that machine in the first place.

[pizzafeelsright]

I am curious where people cannot provide a healthy and stable environment.

I grew up poor, somewhat stable. My children are going to be growing up in a stable and healthy environment because of my choices. This is course has a cost. The wife doesn't have a full time job. Income is limited to one earner. Vacations aren't as extravagant.

I am in the middle of becoming a foster family. Loads more sacrifices and paperwork. The families that lose their children are really screwed up. There's neglect, abuse, and no blood related that are available to help.

The State is not any better at parenting because their interest doesn't align with the child's best interest. The State essentially contracts out parenting. The problem is parenting is essentially its own religion. Naturally that means the State will be in conflict with the Parenting.

Foster children are protected by the State so disciplining methods aren't always accepted. A child of any age without effective discipline will be subject to natural consequences which are often more severe that a loving parent with patience, grace, understanding, and attention to desired outcome.

[underlipton]

Spitballin': I imagine that chaos in the parents' own lives is a major factor. The nature of labor in the US makes employment, for certain classes of workers, highly unstable. The nature of housing markets and law makes housing, for certain classes of workers, highly unstable. The nature of health care (including addiction care) increases vulnerability in mental and physical health. The nature of transportation infrastructure and services make many aspects of life unnecessarily precarious. On and on.

"The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members," isn't a platitude, it's a wake-up call, to pay attention to how bad things can get. If you're going to lose the health insurance that covers your asthmatic kid, because you're about to lose your job, because you can't afford to fix your (planned obsolescent) broken-down car, because you spent your fix fund on rent that increased 20% year-over-year... well, then, it's going to be difficult to be a good parent.

I fully expect the "personal responsibility" people to go in on me.

[rayiner]

> imagine that chaos in the parents' own lives is a major factor. The nature of labor in the US makes employment, for certain classes of workers, highly unstable. The nature of housing markets and law makes housing, for certain classes of workers, highly unstable. The nature of health care (including addiction care) increases vulnerability in mental and physical health. The nature of transportation infrastructure and services make many aspects of life unnecessarily precarious. On and on.

All of those things are much better now than 60 years ago. Have outcomes for children trended in that same direction?

[harimau777]

With the exception of maybe health care, I don't think those things are actually better now. Rent has risen significantly, home ownership is down, and many people are stuck working multiple service sector jobs or as part of the gig economy.

[rayiner]

Home ownership rates blipped down after 2008 and recently during COVID, but are still higher now than they were in the 1990s, which is higher than they were in the 1960s. Rents have gone up, but I think you’re overlooking what share of low end workers used to rent rooms or board with other workers. Lots of temporary housing situations that were common then aren’t even legal now.

I think the difference is that education levels grew much faster than the real economy. A lot of college graduates don’t realize that 50 years ago they would’ve been renting a bedroom from some middle class person instead of having their own crappy and too-expensive place.

[sokoloff]

On a macro level, home ownership is up from 63% to 66% since 1965: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

[underlipton]

This doesn't capture the relative precarity of home-ownership over time. So we've opened home-ownership to a few million more people. Aree they putting the same proportion of their paychecks towards mortgage payments? Are they sacrificing anything else in order to be able to make them? Were they forced into money pits because rent has become unaffordable? How much more or less likely are they to lose their houses in another downturn, if they lose their jobs, if they get sick, compared to the last 50 years? How do people's feelings and behavior change under these circumstances?

It doesn't seem so simple as, "More people own homes, stability is assured."

[pizzafeelsright]

I wouldn't go too aggressive but lemme ask: despite a game stacked against someone would the better path be one of drug abuse, taking on debt, and living in a manner that doesn't take into account that rainy days are ahead or perhaps living in a smaller dwelling, with less material obligations, and setting education above entertainment

[underlipton]

A portion of my hypothetical comes from my actual lived experience over the past year. I don't do drugs, I took on debt to pay for food and to avoid losing my means of transportation and possessions, and the next step for "a smaller dwelling" is my car (even rooms in shared houses have become too expensive).

My stance at this point is that if someone, personally, doesn't have a job (with training, if I'm not qualified) lined up for me so that I can work (work!) my way out of my situation - respectfully - they shouldn't be talking.

If the problem is that there aren't enough real jobs, or not enough capital to hire sustainably, or that industry and the government have dropped the ball on education and training... Those are not personal problems. If I'm lucky (lucky!), I'll find a way to work around it all, eventually. But there are too many people in similar positions.

[harimau777]

I'm not sure that your question reflects the reality of how mental health works. People often don't choose in the conventional sense to abuse drugs, they start using drugs in an attempt to manage the unmanageable problems in their lives. Similarly, prioritizing entertainment over education may be what allows someone to alleviate their depression enough to be able to go to work.

[pizzafeelsright]

I disagree with both conclusions. I would say it is more accurate, in my experience, that people partake of drugs in an effort to escape manageable problems. Likewise, provided enough productive actions and positive effort, the depression would be replaced with challenges that would lead to more peace.

[em-bee]

from the outside problems often look more manageable than the person faced with them sees them.

[paulryanrogers]

> Foster children are protected by the State so disciplining methods aren't always accepted.

Curious what effective methods the state considers unacceptable?

[pizzafeelsright]

Taking away cell phones, taking off doors, physical punishment are a few. I don't agree with them all of these myself but unchecked behavior without corrective action leads to more outbursts and potentially violent reactions.

If you've got an eight year old that has a cell phone because the birth mother gave them one you cannot take it away. Leverage allows for better negotiating.

[em-bee]

yup, taking away the computer from my kids (they have no phones) until they clean up their room works for a 6 year old and a 12 year old.

there should be a law that mobile phones for children should not be allowed without parental/guardian guidance and supervision. which would give foster parents the right to control that.

[pizzafeelsright]

I doubt more law is the solution.

Aligned incentives with effective consequences has done me well.

[em-bee]

of course. i was only talking about preventing or overriding rules that don't allow foster parents to take away a childs phone.

for some issues like this appropriate laws are helpful, for others more flexibility is needed.

[harimau777]

Some parents choose not to provide a healthy and stable environment. It's not uncommon for LGBTQ kids to simply be disowned and kicked out.

[meiraleal]

> It really highlights just how important having a stable home life is to shaping the future outcomes for kids

It also highlights the lack of investment to support those kids having a better future. It is just a matter of priority and resource allocation, after all.

[rayiner]

This is not a problem you can fix with bureaucracy. Bangladeshi villages manage to raise stable kids that don’t commit crimes at the rate of the average American, much less the rate of Americans in the foster system. That should give you a hint about how important “investment” and “resource allocation” is in this problem versus other factors.

[meiraleal]

That exactly proves my point, if Bangladeshi can do it, the US could too, if it was a priority. It is not and it probably won't ever be.

[rayiner]

America places far more priority on, and makes much more investment in, the well-being of children than Bangladesh does. The problem is that the tools Americans have limited themselves to using to accomplish those ends (experts, money, the formal education system) are the wrong tools for the job.