Foster Care Sucks, According To Science
By Kurtis Bright
Study Involving 900,000 Children Proves What We All Knew: Foster Care Is Terrible For Kids
People have long suspected that children who end up in the
foster care system face long odds when it comes to achieving a rich and
fulfilling life--or even simple happiness. There are of course countless movies and
stories that use the stock trope of a horrible foster care environment in some
fashion or another: evil foster parents, cruel siblings, terrible home
conditions--the list is endless.
However this imagery isn’t only confined to the imaginations
of Hollywood screen writers. A recent study, perhaps the first of its
kind, confirms what many have long
suspected: foster care is terrible.
A team of sociologists from the University of California at
Irvine found that not only were mental health problems such as depression and
anxiety strikingly common in foster children, so were physical ailments like
asthma and obesity.
The survey looked at over 900,000 children and the results
were shocking--at least to anyone who is unfamiliar with the foster care system
in the US: foster children were seven times more likely to be depressed, six
times more prone to behavioral problems, and five times more like to suffer
from anxiety than kids from the general population.
It was interesting to note that the foster kids’ scores were
clearly differentiated even from general population kids who came from all
kinds of family situations: children from traditional families with a mother
and father, as well as single-parent and even economically disadvantaged homes
all had a leg up on foster care kids.
One more notable statistic found in the study was that kids
in foster care were three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. In these
times of overdiagnosing and overmedicating, we are starting to become aware of
the degree to which ADHD is used as a catch-all easy diagnosis employed to
corral--and subsequently drug--children who perhaps don’t fit the mold or have
unaddressed underlying emotional problems.
It’s troubling that this is the first time such a scientific
study of the plight of foster children has been conducted, as noted by the
study’s authors.
“No previous research has considered how the mental and
physical well-being of children who have spent time in foster care compares to
that of children in the general population,” said Kristin Turney, study
co-author.
Aside from the fact that no one has bothered to do a study
like this on foster children, what’s perhaps even more disturbing is that the
list of problems facing hundreds of thousands of children in the foster care
system just goes on and on.
Hearing or vision problems are three times more likely for
them. And they are more likely to develop speech problems. And then there’s the
asthma and obesity.
“Foster care children are in considerably worse health than
other children,” Turney added, suggesting that doctors and other health care
professionals take care to note the living arrangements of kids and monitor
their health carefully if they are in foster care.
Another idea: maybe it’s time we rethink they way we do
foster care altogether, if the result is sick, unhealthy, unhappy children.
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