Just hope someone tells him not to abbreviate CUN training sessions...

Bad Eric! Bad Eric!

It should be noted that LA is far from unique in terms of foster care needs. There are kids in every part of the country who could really use someone in their lives who isn't paid to care for them.

There are also shortages of foster parents pretty much everywhere. One of the biggest problems being, it is often hard to find foster parents who are local to where the child started out. For children who are young enough this really isn't as much of a problem, but for kids who are a little older it can make the uprooting they experience that much worse.

Amy, Thanks for posting this email. I sent it out to over 1,500 contacts and have got a pretty amazing response. It can feel awkward asking people to give of themselves, but it is incredible when they actually do.

Like DuWayne notes, their are kids needing love and attention all over this country and world for that matter.

The more that are helped the better that world will be.
-D

Sorry for the awful joke- it was really early, and most who know me will readily tell you I am a tasteless slob.

Good work Daniel.

The other day Marion mentioned the "experimental" nature of feminism: Good foster care probably didn't used to be so hard to come by.

Forty or fifty years ago, there were a lot of empty-nest households where the loving parents had time and space to accept another child into the home for a few years, even a troubled one. And the kids would have a full-time Mom around to help steer them into adulthood. Nowadays such mothers are at work, perhaps as they were throughout their biokid's lives.

Foster kids are thus more likely to fall into homes where space is being made because the 'parents' want the money more than anything else.

Tasteless slobs are always welcomed here. Besides, even though you can talk a bad game, you're one of those who adopted a child.

That's really sweet Amy- thanks.

Today my little guy and I spent the day gardening and then the hot tub- I am in this really weird sweet spot of life.

Good foster care probably didn't used to be so hard to come by.

Fifty years ago, the need for foster care was a small fraction of what it is today. People tended to move around less and familial ties tended to be stronger. Far fewer people were having children outside the boundaries of semi-stable marriages. Use of hard drugs was less common. Adoption was more common, and parents in difficult situations faced far more pressure to place children for adoption. Etc. Now, 100 years ago you had many more cases of immigrant parents dying young and leaving kids who needed to be fostered, but even then, native-born children who had *any* family around were likely to be raised by them. I like the fact that I live in an era with greater personal choice and options, but that has its price.

Foster kids are thus more likely to fall into homes where space is being made because the 'parents' want the money more than anything else.

Here's the thing, though...unless you're a total slob as a foster parent, you're not likely to be making a profit off of the kid. The kid needs to eat, be clothed, participate in school activities, etc. etc. Plus, the foster parents have to make the kid available for visits to the bio-parents - sometimes physically taking them there - as well as take them to court dates, meetings with social workers, physical therapy, emotional therapy...you name it. Most kids who hit foster care have issues out the wazoo - not all of them, but most of them. And then there are the difficulties of raising the kids. In utero exposure to drugs and alcohol can make it very difficult for kids to grasp the concept of consequences for their actions, which is a basic tenet of normal child-rearing. Kids may have been exposed to violence and/or neglect that makes them, in turn, violent and/or devious. And many of these kids feel more comfortable in "bad" situations because those situations are more familiar. Put them in stable situations, and they start acting out, because the stable situations are less familiar. And let's not forget about constantly needing to comply with the wishes of social workers, who may be heroes/heroines working tirelessly for kids, or may be semi-sociopaths who write up foster parents for having fruit in a bowl on the table. Foster kids can impose a lot of monetary and emotional demands. There are far easier ways to make money - selling blood and plasma, digging ditches, becoming a drug company test subject...

Again, there are some awful, awful foster parents out there. There are also some great ones...some of whom are able to be stay-at-home moms or dads thanks to the foster care payments. Most of the foster families I know of either have parents with flexible careers that allow a good chunk of working at home, or have at least one stay-at-home parent...because caring for high-needs kids just isn't compatible with demanding careers. It takes a certain type of person to be a good foster parent at this stage of the game, and the supply of those people is far outstripped by the supply of the needy kids. I read one blog by a woman who's adopted 38 kids from foster care over a period of a few decades. I don't think you could find a childhood expert on earth who would say that's an ideal situation...but it's better than those kids never having permanent homes to call their home and then aging out of the system.

> the supply of those people is far
> outstripped by the supply of the
> needy kids.

You seem to be saying "And that's the way it is...", as if adult humans weren't the causal agency in this somehow. And I disagree with that last graph ("never having permanent homes.") That's like snatching up a mountain climber who's hopelessly lost in a whiteout on Everest, dropping him in the Oriental for a weekend of massages and gentle tourism, and then airlifting him back into the snowstorm to wander to his death: Maybe the warmth from that wonderful Thai hospitality can sustain him as he stumbles blindly down toward base camp. But if he plunges into an airless, frigid crevasse at night and breaks his femur, at least he has the memory, right?

I followed your link. The rhetoric is almost identical to Lennon's:

> That I will always love her, when
> she is little and when she is big,
> no matter where I am and no
> matter where she is.

> Because that is the truth. And no
> matter what happens, and no matter
> what my legal status to that child
> is, I will love her and she will
> always be my Snowbaby, even if she
> goes away and I never see her
> again.

How are these narratives not despicably pornographic?

This foster parent isn't go to be there to provide food, clothing or shelter; will not guide the child through education and assist studies; will no offer council in friendships; and will certainly not protect the child from the sexual predations that so often await these children. (Predations which, I suspect, are the currency of "profit" you think missing from the register.) After a time --probably a short time-- this child is going to wonder what fucking good came from being someone's 'Snowbaby'... Being on the receiving end of this huggy-kissy encounter proved to be worth squat. The kid may distrust feminine love from that point, or might just forswear all intimacy. Whatever. We shouldn't be surprised.

Here's what I think's going on: Many childhoods have profound disappointments... But anyone who lives long enough to grow furry genitalia is probably going to have their heart broken by adult romantic love. And most adults, equipped with an adult sense of irony, get over it and move forward. Later, when adults want to tickle these corpses, we enjoy some melodrama.

(My personal favorite for these purposes is Hollywood's 1941 "Casablanca." Some guys dream of being Victor, the stalwart leader of men in battle. Some guys wanna be Captain Renault, who gets to nail stunning Bulgarian brides. But I always wanna be Rick, the hero barkeep who spawns a thousand brilliant cliches, including the one so abused by Lennon and the foster mom: "We'll always have Paris.")

It may have been Prager, it might have been Paglia, it coulda been anybody... But 15 years ago I heard someone say something brilliant: The attraction women feel towards having children is erotic. Many women daydream about caring for a baby with the same depth of preoccupation with which many businessmen dream of banging the receptionist from behind. In both cases, the imaginary encounters are fleshy, involve bodily secretions, and toy recklessly with the most powerful bonds a human can feel.

Lotsa people drift into adulthood without being told that they're adults and that different things are expected of them now. Ilsa Lund understood why Rick said goodbye at the airport. There's no reason why Snowbaby, or Julian, should have to understand the dishonesty at the heart of that chatter.

(I have another Beatle memory, but Google Image search doesn't come through this time. In this book (I think), there's a picture of Ringo ditching his son Zak (age 9-ish) at the airport, or shipping him off, following some Disneyland Dad encounter. It's not a paparrazzi shot: Who ever took the picture was pretending it could be treasured as a Kodak keepsake of good family times... But you've never seen a child look so bummed out in your whole life. Next time you're in a used bookstore, it's worth looking for.)

So many of these crippling events (incompetent adoptions, foster failures, single parenthood) could be fixed if people would observe the simple principle that to do well, a child deserves a loving mother and a loving father. This isn't some white / Republican / Jerry Falwell presumption twisted from the mists of brutal antiquity, nor a smirking cartoon punchline from Psychology Today's summer-fun double issue. It's a plain responsibility for adults to fulfill, even when it's painful to do so.

I intend to be a blistering asshole about this until the day I die. Join me.

I intend to be a blistering asshole about this until the day I die. Join me.

I already have. Total agreement.

And it really is this simple, as you put it above:

So many of these crippling events (incompetent adoptions, foster failures, single parenthood) could be fixed if people would observe the simple principle that to do well, a child deserves a loving mother and a loving father. This isn't some white / Republican / Jerry Falwell presumption twisted from the mists of brutal antiquity...

I would only change that to two loving parents. I'm fine with Heather having two mommies, but there should be two loving parents.

If you have a kid, you owe it to them to not teach them, as kids, the nuances and bullshit between adult goodbyes. Just for starters. Great insight into the Ringo/Zak thing, by the way. Along with the rest.

Why do so many people not get this?

> I would only change that to two
> loving parents. I'm fine with
> Heather having two mommies, but
> there should be two loving parents.

That's not a small change, and you're wrong. Men and women aren't the same, which (amongst other things) is why we have preferences. But for creating human beings, nature demands one of each.

Sorry.

PS- That shoulda been "not offer counsel" instead of "no offer council".

I'm in a hurry for justice here, people.

Also I was running late for work.

Crid, just for the record, I don't disagree with you on your major points, except perhaps for the one that Amy brought up. You're right - a record number of kids are in the system now because people have screwed up in some major way and the small defenseless people in their lives have taken the brunt of it. I just thought my babblings were long enough without getting into the question of casuality!

As for the link I sent you to, I don't disagree with your take on that, at least not completely, but I will point out that the foster mom in question *wants* to adopt the little kids that she's fostering. However, whether she can or not is uncertain, because the bio-mom wants them back. Which sucks for the little kids - and I am certainly open to suggestions for making the system more amenable to kids' needs, instead of adult needs - but isn't the fault of the foster mom. Agree about the saying goodbye, completely, but not sure how to remove that element entirely from foster care without immediately terminating the rights of all troubled parents, some of whom are hopelessly screwed up and will never be able to take care of others and some of whom are a parenting class and a job away from being good at caring for their kids.

Sigh. Sometimes I wonder if we'd be better off going back to orphanages...and then I remember what I know about group homes and decide not. This is one reason I read science fiction - sci-fi authors can come up with great solutions for this stuff. Lois McMaster Bujold is especially good on the topic in her Vorkosigan books.

On the topic of the Beatles: Is it a sign of cynicism, or realism, that I'm pleasantly surprised that *half* of the band's members appear to have been good dads? (With the possible exception of McCartney marrying and then fathering a child with the Crazy One-Legged Chick, but regular men do strange things after their beloved wives die, too.) I mean, among rock stars, Steven Tyler is considered to be a good dad. The narcissism frequently required for true artistic genius just doesn't mesh well with the demands of parenthood...which doesn't mean that said stars get a pass, but it does mean that others should think twice about reproducing with 'em.

Well, just for the record, part of being a blistering asshole is having a hair trigger.

But you and Amy are wrong about the gay thing. In decades (maybe centuries) ahead, grad students in sosh are going to have a lot of fun saying why... Their thesis papers will be accessible, articulate and irrefutable. A few years later, teenagers will have fun mocking your attitudes, in the same way that they now think they have precious personal wisdom about the environment and race relations. The delicacy and nuance of your oh-so-compassionate stance on this will be the butt of a smirking one-liner in the "fish without a bicycle" genre.

Allright, enough blistering. But you're still wrong, and I mean it.

We all like a good piece of scifi, but there's this saying: The problem is that in theory there's no difference between theory and reality, but in reality there is a difference. People write fiction because it's not like real life.

The thing to remember about Steve Tyler is that he let Todd Rundgren raise his daughters. Rundgren was a flashy rock star too, and didn't provide a typical home for them, and when Liv turned out to be a sober, stable person, I was completely surprised. (Someone once called her "inexplicably sane.")

But last week she announced that she's getting a divorce. She has a very young child. Apples falling from trees, etc.

Yup, saw that about Liv Tyler. Sigh.

The thing to remember about Steve Tyler is that he let Todd Rundgren raise his daughters.

Just the one - Liv's the only one he has with Bebe Buell. Mia is his child by a former wife, and he has two teenagers by another former wife. And from how the official story goes, it appears as though Bebe Buell made the call on the Rundgren thing, with Rundgren's full knowledge and cooperation, because Tyler was too hopped up on coke at the time to be any type of parent. But yeah, allowing Rundgren to continue to be viewed as Liv's dad was probably one of the more responsible things that Tyler did during that time period, and Rundgren's willingness to parent the kid is one of the better things he's done (way above and beyond the call of duty to an ex-girlfriend).

The thing is, though, that the Tylers and the Lennons and the Starrs of the world are always going to have a lot of resources around to cushion their falls if they indulge in stupid behavior. I'd say that a hell of a lot of kids in the foster care system have parents doing nothing more stupid than the things done by a lot of celebrities - the difference is that those parents don't have handlers who can clean up after them and get the kids to school. I'd like to think that people can ignore celebrities - God knows I don't see them as role models for my own behavior - but I do think that their actions create a perception that certain behaviors are okay and cool. That's not the only reason that we have scads of kids in foster care, but it's not helping, either.

You know more about the rock stars of my generation than I do. These were my rock stars... I have ticket stubs from 1973! And everything!

As far as Tyler goes, there's no point in flattering a father who's "hopped up on coke." Eventually the irony of it all folds over so many times that it's better just to say "destructive fuckhead" rather than "good dad." The only thing being cushioned is the guilt these grownups feel... And they should be encouraged to feel it deeply. Just ask Steven's (Todd's?) grandchild.