The Culture of Poverty, Crack Babies, and Welfare Cheats: The Making of the "Healthy White Baby Crisis"
The Culture of Poverty, Crack Babies, and Welfare Cheats: The Making of the "Healthy White Baby Crisis"
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贫困文化、缺陷婴儿和福利欺骗：“健康白人婴儿危机”的形成
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发表时间：
2003
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
L. Briggs
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作者：
A. Ortiz;L. Briggs
压力和创伤比较了两组：美国家庭收养的罗马尼亚寄养后儿童和美国家庭收养的寄养后儿童。实际上，从任何方面来看——被收养时的年龄、对同龄人和家庭的攻击性、与其他孩子相处的困难、学校问题、犯罪行为——这两组孩子对他们的收养家庭都提出了同样的（相当大的）行为和情感挑战。（令人意想不到的是，尽管养父母们面临着严重的困难，但仍有很高比例的养父母——84%——表示他们对自己与养子的关系感到满意或非常满意。）发现这些孩子在很多方面都如此相似，这就提出了一个问题：为什么美国人在1991年涌向罗马尼亚（那一年国务院为罗马尼亚的“孤儿”签发了2594份签证，1990年和1992年每个人只签发了100份签证），以相当大的代价收养那些陷入困境的孩子，而在美国，他们本可以在有机构支持和政府补贴的情况下收养本质上相似的孩子？虽然养父母的动机和他们收养的孩子一样各不相同，但这种模式表明，某种文化上的因素在起作用，使人们远离寄养的美国孩子。从这个角度来看，法律学者理查德·波斯纳（Richard Posner）关于难以安置的美国儿童的低价格增长需求的范式显然是不充分的；有比金钱复杂得多的东西处于危险之中（帕特里夏·威廉姆斯（Patricia Williams）讽刺地称波斯纳的作品是“老孩子，廉价”的模式。）1991年，在罗马尼亚收养热潮的鼎盛时期，许多人认为答案是粗暴的种族问题，因为这些被认为是从罗马尼亚收养的白人儿童。然而，在美国寄养的白人儿童数量相当可观（接近40%），从任何直接的角度来看，都证明这种说法是错误的要么是很多想要领养孩子的父母的行为极其不理智——花费1万美元、2万美元，甚至3万美元，穿越半个地球，用很少人懂的语言来协商棘手的签证问题，收养那些和他们在美国领养的孩子一样老、一样受创伤、一样种族、一样生病的孩子，并了解他们的过去；安娜·特蕾莎·奥尔蒂斯和劳拉·布里格斯《贫困文化、吸毒婴儿和福利骗子》
stress and trauma compared two groups: postinstitutionalized children adopted from Romania by U.S. families, and post–foster care children adopted by U.S. families. By virtually any measure—age at adoption, aggressiveness toward peers and family, trouble getting along with other children, school problems, delinquency—these two groups of children offered the same (considerable) behavioral and emotional challenges to their adoptive families. (In an unexpected note of grace, despite their serious struggles, a very high percentage of adoptive parents—84 percent— reported that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with their relationship with their adoptive children.)1 Finding these children so similar in so many dimensions raises a question: why did Americans rush to Romania in 1991 (2,594 State Department visas were issued for Romanian “orphans” that year, and only 100 each in 1990 and 1992)2 to adopt deeply troubled kids at considerable expense to themselves and with very little formal support for raising them, when they could have adopted substantially similar children in the United States, with institutionalized support and government subsidy? While the motives of adoptive parents are as heterogeneous as the children they adopt, this pattern suggests that something, culturally, was at work that steered people away from U.S. kids in foster care. In this light, legal scholar Richard Posner’s paradigm of low price increasing demand for difficult-to-place U.S. children is clearly inadequate; something far more complex than money was at stake.3 (Patricia Williams cynically called Posner’s the “old children, cheap” model.)4 In 1991, at the height of the Romanian adoption boom, many suggested that the answer was crudely race, as these were presumptively white children being adopted from Romania.5 Yet the considerable numbers of white children in U.S. foster care (nearly 40 percent) gives the lie to this as a motive in any straightforward way.6 Either a lot of would-be adoptive parents were behaving in an extremely irrational way—spending upward of $10,000, $20,000, even $30,000, traveling halfway across the world, and negotiating difficult visa problems in a language few of them knew to adopt children who were as old, as traumatized, of the same race, and as sick as children that they could adopt in the United States with more information about their past, free access to health care and mental health Ana Teresa Ortiz and Laura Briggs The Culture of Poverty, Crack Babies, and Welfare Cheats