It's been nearly 20 years since my book about child welfare, Wounded Innocents was published (Prometheus Books, 1990, 1995). I began the chapter about the history of American child welfare with an attempt to debunk one of the most enduring, and pernicious, myths in the field. In fact, one might call it the creation myth of the entire modern child welfare establishment.
The mountain of myth is built upon a molehill of truth about Mary Ellen Wilson, a little girl who lived in New York City in the 1870s, who was repeatedly and brutally beaten. In court she testified to beatings by her "Mamma."
The first myth propounded by America's "child savers," as they proudly called themselves in the 19th Century, is that it required the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to intervene and seek protection of Mary Ellen as an animal.
To this day, I wrote in Wounded Innocents,
Child savers point to the case of Mary Ellen as a prime example of what life for children would be like without them. The case teaches us, they say, that parents cannot be allowed to control their children like property and that massive intervention is essential to protect "children's rights."
But if you know the real story of Mary Ellen, using it to justify the current system of massive coercive intervention into families becomes impossible.
For starters, though the head of the local SPCA did indeed call the case to the attention of the court, he did so as a prominent private citizen, not in his official capacity – and not by suggesting that Mary Ellen be protected as an animal.
But even more important, there's one vital part of the story the child savers, and the credulous reporters who love the Mary Ellen myth, almost always leave out:
Mary Ellen was a foster child.
The "mamma" who did her so much harm was her foster mother. Mary Ellen had been taken from her real mamma and placed with her abuser by the New York Board of Charities – which then failed to monitor her care.
As I wrote in the book:
The real lessons of Mary Ellen concern the inability of the state to be an effective parent, the risks of abuse in foster care, and the need to help parents – like Mary Ellen's real "mamma" – take care of their children. In short, the lesson of Mary Ellen is the lesson every doctor is taught in medical school: First, do no harm.
But a few inconvenient facts aren't going to quash a myth with such powerful visceral appeal – one that panders to all our middle-class rescue fantasies at once. So every generation of young, journalists seems to embrace it all over again. (And they're not alone, even one of the best reporters ever to cover these issues fell for this one, long ago.)
The latest example turned up earlier this year. I'm not going to name the reporter or the paper since there's no reason to pick on one, earnest, well-meaning reporter when so many have been fooled. But it was a classic. For her one and only identified source, the reporter relied on a local real estate agent and fiction writer who'd co-authored a book that accepted all the Mary Ellen mythology at face value. Based on this, the reporter declared that
Indeed, the head of an animal protection group helped rescue a child in the 1874 case that ignited the child protection movement. Advocates argued she deserved at least the rights of an animal. [The real estate agent/author] … said children were viewed as property and "it was about not interfering between a parent and a child." Uneasiness about government interference in families endured.
The reporter then turns to the local judge, whose comments over the years to not suggest overwhelming insight, but someone regarded by the local paper as wiser than Solomon himself. The judge tells the reporter that, in the reporter's words,
"liberty interests led to parents being allowed to raise children largely how they saw fit until as recently as the early 1970s."
Absolutely none of this is true. Mary Ellen's foster mother was convicted of felonious assault, not animal cruelty. New York City's first statute against child abuse dates to 1833. By 1874 thousands of New York City children, whose parents' primary crimes had been being poor and being immigrants, already had been taken from those parents and shipped out to the south and Midwest on so-called "orphan trains" - even though many of them were not orphans. And by the early 1970s, there were hundreds of thousands of children trapped in foster care on any given day.
Most important, of course, that little detail about Mary Ellen being a foster child is nowhere to be found in the reporter's account.
But it's how the reporter defended her account that would, I am sure, make at least one of my former journalism professors roll over in his grave. It's true, she wrote on the newspaper's website, because the American Humane Association says so. You know – American Humane, the animal rights group with a child saving arm – the close cousin of the SPCA. This is, of course, like saying "I know what the candidate said about his economic plan is true because his campaign office vouched for every word!" or "I know the drug is safe because the drug company flack told me so!"
But the mythology and hype didn't end with Mary Ellen. In fact, when it comes to misinformation-per-column-inch, this story is hard to top.
For instance, in keeping with the "we-treat-animals-better-than-children" theme, there's the return of this old chestnut: "Foster care board rates … are less than what it often costs to board a dog…" I dealt with that one in this previous post to the Blog.
And there are two big errors right in the lead, which reads: "More than 300 abused and neglected children lack voices in … County court. There are not enough volunteers."
Error number one: Just because a child has been brought to court – and even just because a child is in foster care does not mean that child is abused and neglected. It may mean only that a caseworker thinks the child may be abused and neglected and a judge is allowing the government to hold that child in foster care while everyone tries to find out. Saying that every child in foster care is "abused and neglected" is like saying everyone sitting in a jail is a criminal. Some are. But others are awaiting trial because they can't make bail.
The second error is the claim that those volunteer advocates are a voice for the child. They are not. In this state, as in most, the advocates advocate for whatever they think is best. If the child happens to agree, then the child has a voice. But if the child wants to go home and the advocate thinks it is in that child's "best interests" to remain in foster care (or if the child wants to stay in foster care and the advocate wants the child to go home) the child has no voice. Whether or not one believes this is as it should be (and I certainly don't) this is simply a blatant error of fact – one of many in a story riddled with misinformation and mythology.
