Grandma Was Right

The new elite walk the 50s and talk the 60s.

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Rob Henderson, a psychologist and author, makes his Remnant debut to discuss his new book Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class. Growing up in poverty and moving through multiple foster homes in California, Henderson noticed a disparity between elite beliefs and the actual tools he used to climb the social ladder. The two explore this concept of “luxury beliefs,” our screwed up foster care system, the arguments for mandatory public service, and more.

Show Notes:
—Rob’s newsletter
—Rasmussen report on Affirmative Action
—The Remnant with Brad Wilcox
—The Remnant with Tim Carney
—Atomic Habits
—Charles Murray’s review of Rob’s book

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Comments (45)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Drew Neilley

    As others have noted on the stability or instability of foster care placements, that is not how it is now. My wife and I are currently foster parents in Ohio and the importance of attachment is paramount in our training. Though there may be pain if separation occurs after attachment, research shows that kids who have developed healthy attachments continue on to grow more healthy attachments. The primary goal is stability. It is still true that there is a huge need for foster parents and caseworkers with children’s services, and so really it is impractical to have foster kids on some rotating foster home schedule. I’m interested in reading the book but disappointed his research on the current foster care system may be out of date.

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  2. Rawkki54

    Jo'hnah, your subject owes you a cigar. I just bought the book on Audible.

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  3. Grandymitchell

    “But enough about me, let’s talk about you… what do you think of me?” Bette Midler in the film Beaches (1988). Sometimes when I listen to the Remnant, I think of this quote.

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  4. Charles Putnam

    I'm glad I read several thoughtful, generous comments from folks like Kimbaukusfitzgibbon and others before giving in to the temptation to rant at Jonah about his repeated incantation of the phrase "banality of evil."

    As others pointed out, there are good people working in the child protection and foster care systems to try to fashion the best outcome possible for children who too often come into those systems after experiencing abuse, trauma and neglect. They do so knowing that the system is far from perfect, and that the legislative responses to its imperfections have sometimes helped and sometimes hurt the goal of reducing the harm to children in state care.

    I wish Jonah had shown a lot more curiosity and humility about these systems. The legal and constitutional underpinning of those systems makes preservation of the birth family a primary goal, even when outside "experts" would deem a child better off without the birth family. As Jonah remembers to point out in other contexts, promoting one goal (parental autonomy from state interference) while avoiding evil (ongoing or additional harm to children) is often a nuanced endeavor in a liberal democracy. Calling this nuance "banal evil" discredits Jonah and the intellectual endeavor to make sense of the problem.

    Finally, a quibble with both Jonah and Mr. Henderson. Their discussion of the frequency with which children in state care are receiving prescribed medication for mental health diagnoses suggested to me that the discussants find these numbers to be evidence of a Dickensian endeavor to medicate unruly, but perfectly healthy, children into submission. Antidepressants, antianxiety meds and anti-ADHD medications are common prescriptions for children and adults with certain observed or reported behaviors. Most enlightened, modern people do not stigmatize persons who carry these diagnoses or take these medications, even when they enter discussions about the dangers of overprescription. To suggest that children in state care should be denied these medications would not be a humane response to their conditions, and casually implying that these medications are vastly overprescribed for this population shows little empathy or understanding for the children or the licensed professionals who work with them.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Kimbaukusfitzgibbon

    Thank you so very much for this Johan. The foster care system surely does need a light shined on it. Foster children are the modern day orphans and need our support.

    My comments are critical of Mr. Henderson, but he taught me so very much in your podcast.

    While I have not read Mr. Henderson’s book that I downloaded onto my Kindle yet, my experience as a Nevada CASA doesn’t match with the phrase of “intentional instability” due to anything let keeping FC or FP from becoming too attached to one another. In my rural county, it has been my experience with my own CASAs or court observations that everything is done to keep a FC in the same school and FP home.

    The intake process of a child into FC is brutal for sure. The child is picked up by a deputy sheriff and social worker. They then have to move into a temporary facility usually a group home while the extent of abuse or neglect is assessed. The next step, usually because a foster home in or near child’s school is not available, is that the child goes into a temporary or respite foster home. Because of licensure differences there are many more foster homes of this sort verses permanent foster homes.

    In my area, I haven’t had or witnessed a case where everything wasn’t done to keep a child at their school. Mr. Henderson said nothing about that. It’s Uber important to keep a child in their school. Including social workers driving FC to and from their school until they either had appropriate public transportation or were moved into a FP home in the child’s school district. That can’t always happen because of the shortage of FP homes. The exceptions, in my experience, were children that were considered violent or had a substantial criminal background.

    I found Mr. Henderson’s statement about why this is an issue being ascribed to “kids have no political power” lacking. Criminal court is open to all but family court is not. There is lot done to protect these children because they are minors, and that hides a lot IMO. As I sit in court as a CASA observer, I often wish that others could hear what I do. Actually, I wish that I could scream out right now what I’ve heard, but I can’t because of my confidentiality agreement as a CASA.

    Even my worst abused or bravest CASAs don’t want to say anything about it after they leave whatever circumstances they were in. They are teens just trying to move on.

    I’m willing to bet that Mr. Henderson did not have a CASA. The reason CASA was founded and exists today was that Seattle Superior Court Judge David Soukup realized that children in foster care had a bunch of different people in and out of their lives and that he needed one set of consistent eyes on them whose responsibility was to report to him about the child’s best interest. A CASA stays with its charge until parental reunification, adoption, or timing out.

    Become a CASA! https://nationalcasagal.org/Show lessShow less

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  6. Avatar photo
    John Lewis

    Rob Henderson is a hero.

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    Ian Fillmore

    Loved the podcast. I'll be checking out Rob's book. Most people don't realize this, but 5% of children in the United States will enter foster care at some point. That's one in twenty, which means that, roughly speaking, there's a foster child sitting in every elementary school classroom in the country. If you have kids in school, they have classmates who are in foster care (probably placed with a family member like a grandparent).

    On the issue of Rob's experience in the foster system, I would point out that much of it (I'm a little fuzzy on when he was adopted) occurred before the Adoption and Safe Families Act was passed in 1997. You can read a little about it here: . ASFA helped change the paradigm about the importance of moving toward permanency for foster children. Ideally, that permanency is reunification, but if reunification is not happening, the system is supposed to move toward other permanency options (adoption or guardianship). Kids are not supposed to languish in the foster system for year after year. My sense is that there is broad agreement on these principles now, although how well they are implemented in practice may vary. ASFA also created a reporting system for tracking some key indicators of state-level foster system performance. You can read the most recent report here: . Among these key indicators are measures of time to permanency as well as stability in foster placements. All of this is to say that Rob's experience in the foster system is not how it is "supposed" to work nowadays, though I'm sure it still does sometimes. Certainly, deliberately bouncing kids around foster homes is highly discouraged.

    I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing about the foster system is ideal. Ideally, no child would ever need to enter the foster system. And if they did they would ideally be taken in by family members (over half of foster children are placed with family, usually a grandparent). So when a child is placed with a non-relative foster family, the government is stepping into a situation where lots of things have already gone wrong. Typically, at that point the child is already pretty traumatized (e.g. abuse, neglect, etc) and is then further traumatized by being removed from his or her family. So it's just a rotten situation where you're looking for the least bad outcome for the child.

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  8. Mark

    This is one of the episodes I make my wife listen to.

    But Henderson’s pronunciation of “covet” just sounds so wrong to my ear.

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    Addicus

    Rob Henderson is an example that exceptional people will succeed despite life's disadvantages. Pauper to a Prince can happen.

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