Somebody's Children or Nobody's Children? How the Sociological Perspective Could Enliven Research on Foster Care

Abstract

Social scientists have long been concerned about how the fortunes of parents affect their children, with acute interest in the most marginalized children. Yet little sociological research considers children in foster care. In this review, we take a three-pronged approach to show why this inattention is problematic. First, we provide overviews of the history of the foster care system and how children end up in foster care, as well as an estimate of how many children ever enter foster care. Second, we review research on the factors that shape the risk of foster care placement and foster care caseloads and how foster care affects children. We close by discussing how a sociological perspective and methodological orientation—ranging from ethnographic observation to longitudinal mixed methods research, demographic methods, and experimental studies—can foster new knowledge around the foster care system and the families it affects.

Mental and Physical Health of Children in Foster Care

“…22 In a similar vein, research that had compared children in foster care to other children in the population had focused initially only on a small number of types of households and did not consider comparisons with children in economically disadvantaged families. 16 The goal of this article was to document the differences in mental and physical health outcomes of children placed in foster care to outcomes of children not placed in foster care, children adopted from foster care, children across specific family types, and children in economically disadvantaged families by using the 2011-2012 NSCH.…”

“…Model 1 estimates the unadjusted association, Model 2 adjusts for child characteristics, and Model 3 adjusts for both child and household characteristics. Because children placed in foster care experienced difficulties in their families of origin, 3,22 which are not captured due to data limitations, Model 3 provides a conservative test of the association between foster care placement and children's health. In Table 4, logistic regression models estimate children's health as a function of foster care placement, comparing children placed in foster care to children adopted from foster care and children across a variety of household living arrangements (eg, single-mother households).…”

Children’s Academic Achievement and Foster Care

“…However, when comparing children in an OHP versus children in the general population, unmeasured differences are likely to bias estimates. 10,17,18 An additional limitation of many earlier studies is that they were unable to observe children before, during, and after OHP and/or relied on relatively small samples selected based on CPS involvement.…”

Instability in Care and Living Arrangements: Putting Foster Youth in Context

“…The degree to which foster care itself is the reason for this heightened risk of instability remains an empirical challenge for two reasons. First, the social, demographic, and economic selectivity of children placed in foster care makes it difficult to disentangle foster care effects from effects related to other dimensions of disadvantage on foster youths' exposure to care and living arrangement instability (Courtney 2000;DeGue and Widom 2009;Goemans et al 2016;Turney and Wildeman 2014;Wildeman and Waldfogel 2014). In addition to suffering from the physical, emotional, and mental trauma of likelchild maltreatment (abuse and/or neglect), many of these children demonstrate elevated levels of developmental and behavioral problems and are disproportionately likely to come from homes and communities that are stressed by economic hardship, mental and physical health challenges, and neighborhood and/or domestic violence, among other acute stressors (e.g.…”