In the New York Times Magazine for Sunday, July 26, 2009, Pamela Paul presented a thought-provoking article, whose title asked: "Why Can a Lesbian Couple Be Foster Parents to Older Kids But Have to Fight to Adopt a Newborn?" This article told a poignant story of family love and loss, and touched on a number of important issues about adult rights and children's needs.
Today, I'd like to touch on a small but important portion of Paul's article--- one which has to do with all forms of adoption and fostering, by all sorts of adults. This is the matter of the intense distress caused to infants by abrupt, long-term separations from their familiar caregivers. Although some judges understand this, it is all too common to have situations like one Paul describes, in which a judge simply rejects the possibility that an infant will be affected by a change of custody.
Kathryn Kutil and Cheryl Hess, the couple whose situation Paul discusses, had successfully cared for numbers of older foster children in their West Virginia home. But when a newborn was placed with them, a motion was soon filed to have the baby taken away, citing alleged dangers for her in the home of a same-sex couple.
Arguments about this continued until the little girl was 11 months old, when the judge concerned declared that the effect of separation could be disregarded. According to Paul's article, he felt that "uprooting an 11-month-old baby, while not ideal, wouldn't be traumatic. Who among us remembers what happened when we were a year old?". The judge ordered the child to be moved by noon on the following day.
The little girl, known in the Paul article as TiCasey, went to a foster family who had adopted a two-year-old and were already fostering an infant. Five days later, the new foster parents were overwhelmed not only by the three small children but also by the serious illness of a near relative. After an emergency stay of a change to another foster home by the state Supreme Court, TiCasey was returned to Kathryn and Cheryl, and after more delays and worries, the two foster mothers began the adoption process. The state Supreme Court rejected the original judge's view that the separation was acceptable.
TiCasey's experiences would have been disturbing to any adult who was rushed from one setting to another without explanation or warning. What would be the probable response of a toddler who had a familiar home and suddenly found herself with strangers in a strange house? Young children almost invariably respond to such a change with protest-- crying, fussing, refusing to eat, sleeping only when completely exhausted. After some days or weeks, they move on to a period of despair, with less crying, quiet compliance, a small appetite, and lack of interest in play or socializing. After many weeks or months, they gradually recover their energy and interest in the world, and become attached to their new-now more familiar--- caregivers.
Are there long-term effects on children when they experience a separation like the one TiCasey went through? If there is only one such separation, and the child is well-cared-for in both homes, there will probably be complete recovery. However, a child going through a separation misses out, at least temporarily, on the learning she would normally be experiencing in play and in social interactions with familiar people; although most children will catch up, those whose learning is at risk for other reasons may not. In addition, it should be remembered that many children who experience one serious separation will experience more. In TiCasey's situation, the plan was to move her to a new and unfamiliar foster home (and another one might have followed that one). It took the involvement of the state Supreme Court, and the devoted efforts of Kathryn and Cheryl, to save her from this additional experience of abrupt change.
John Bowlby, the British psychiatrist, described these events in his early work on attachment and separation. Bowlby's colleagues, the Robertsons, filmed young children's responses to abrupt separations and showed the world that toddlers are not "too young to care" whether they are among strangers. Bowlby even reported that children could become physically ill under the stress of separation, and this may be the case in some situations. The Robertsons later showed that the best way to support toddlers through separations was to provide them with plenty of sensitive, responsive adult care. But many fostered children go without this help. In TiCasey's situation, the new foster parents may have been highly qualified and had excellent intentions toward the little girl, but their existing commitments to a two-year-old and another infant must have made it impossible to give her an ideal level of support.
Information about toddlers' responses to separation has been available for over 40 years, but we still see that many parents, judges, and caseworkers are ignorant of the impact of separations on toddlers. Why can't we teach these facts in high school "family life" classes? It could save foster children from a world of unnecessary difficulty.
