Voices
heavily on a family’s day-to-day
functioning is an understatement.
Cases frequently linger in the
court system for months or sometimes years. Parents are required
to open their homes up to an everchanging line-up of caseworkers
that come knocking at the dinner
hour or, worse, past bedtime. And
even if the legal case is ultimately
dismissed, the parent’s name will
likely remain on a statewide registry of people who have maltreated
children until the parent’s youngest
child turns 28, a stigma that will
foreclose numerous job opportunities and disadvantage the parent at
every turn in future child-related
court proceedings.
We know that substance use cuts
across socioeconomic and racial
lines. National studies show that
22.5 million Americans say they
regularly use drugs, and marijuana
use is heaviest among whites. Yet it
is poor parents of color who overwhelmingly shoulder the burden of
a dysfunctional and broken child
welfare system. Despite higher rates
of illegal drug use by white women
during pregnancy, African American women are 10 times more likely
to be reported to child welfare authorities for testing positive for an
illegal drug at their child’s birth.
EMMA S. KETTERINGHAM &
MARY ANNE MENDENHALL
HUFFINGTON
10.21.12
The child welfare system’s treatment of substance-using parents
provides one of the clearest examples of the double standard that
exists for rich and poor parents
in this country. In one America,
parents risk nothing
more than the passive disapproval of
Our
peers whose tolerance
courts
of parental palliatives
regularly mete
stops at a legal glass
out draconian
of Chardonnay at dinpunishments
nertime. In the other
to poor
America, families risk
parents for
needless and costly
behavior
governmental intruthat would
sion, court-directed
elicit nothing
scrutiny of their parworse than a
enting abilities, and,
disapproving
in many cases, the
glance in more
permanent disruption
well-to-do
of their families.
circles.”
Our courts regularly
mete out draconian
punishments to poor
parents for behavior that would
elicit nothing worse than a disapproving glance in more well-to-do
circles. ACS perpetuates this double
standard unabated—without any
support for its position—causing
more short- and long-term harm to
children than a little “pot
for parents” ever could.