Neglect, Poverty, and Racialization in the Recession

Child abuse and neglect is wide reaching public health problem – touching criminal justice, the civil court system, and community health services in a community – not to mention the children and parents affected by the abuse or neglect.  As a society, ensuring that each child has an upbringing that protects them from harm and provides them with all basic human needs should be one of our highest goals.  Children from abusive or neglectful homes often face serious and intractable psychological and physical problems as well as become more likely to abuse and neglect children as adults (NSPCC, 2013).  However, in seeking to protect these children, it is also important to understand the effects of our current system and check whether the effects are in line with our goals of protection. 

Unicef End Child Poverty Poster

Despite a mild economic turnaround, poverty in the United States is persistent. A new article in the Washington Times estimates that one in four children are living in poverty in the United States (Washington Times, October 2013).   This may have ramifications for child protective services: The co-incidence of poverty and abuse is well known (Bower, 2003), and the co-incidence of poverty and race is even more notorious (Ards, et. al., 2013).  Often, the confabulation of race/poverty and neglect (as well as, but less commonly abuse) produce unfavorable and, perhaps, unfair results: statistically, African American children are 1.6 times more likely to be found in child protective services and two times more likely to be found in out-of-home placement than they are to be found in the overall population (Ards, et. al., 2013).  As Duva and Metzger opine, the well-meaning “edicts of ‘save the child’ with their implied message to ‘punish the family’ have permeated child welfare policy and practice through its transformation from a largely segregated system that excluded African Americans into the present” (Duva & Metzger, 2011).  

With little money, there is little room to provide adequate care to one’s children.  Even with the best of intentions, the poor (and particularly non-white) populations can become caught up in the child welfare system, running the risk of losing their children and parents to the foster system and criminal justice system, respectively (Ards, et. al., 2013). Duva and Metzger describe the case of an impoverished mother whose crime wholly consisted of her seven children living with her in a motel room.  The woman could not afford child care or housing and thus had her children taken away (Duva & Metzger, 2011).  Given that child abuse and neglect often involve both civil and criminal – sometimes felony – charges, a spiral of poverty can easily end in the twin tragedies of children in foster care (a vulnerable situation commonly resulting in additional abuse, neglect, and instability) and a parent in prison.  

Imprisoned mother visiting with her child

In short, what we define as neglect - particularly in situations of abject poverty – may indeed be racialized or at least based on a model of parenting that is structured for the ideal, not the real.  When the effect of an allegation of neglect is to separate parents and children, place working parents in jail, and send already vulnerable children into the foster care system, we need to seriously consider whether we are protecting children or punishing poverty and African American working motherhood.  Particularly in this time of national recession and widening income gaps, we need to ensure that parents and children living in poverty are not criminalized and separated but nurtured and protected.  As public health advocates, we should be sensitive to any process that criminalizes poverty and – by design or consequence, minority status - instead of addressing the poverty itself.