Why Family Therapy Should be Used before Foster Care

Ethical Issues, Criminological Theories, and Public Policy
Removing children from the home for a single instance of domestic violence, abuse, or drug/alcohol offenses committed by the legal guardian is terribly severe. Families face challenges and should be permitted to grow, develop, make changes and take ownership of their issues. People should be permitted to fail, to learn from failure, and to have second chances. It is a cruel society that does not permit moments of imperfection. It is all reminiscent of Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter in which the Puritan society marginalizes the woman who commits adultery and punishes her with ostracism. There is nothing human or even Christian in such an approach, and it is a clear ethical violation of the common good doctrine of utilitarianism. Families that are broken up tend to cause more problems for children than families that stay whole and that are permitted to continue on and come together to address their issues (Siegel, 2018). There are better alternatives to addressing these issues than to remove the children. Mandating counseling or family therapy is one possible idea. However, to spit up the family for one infraction is unethical in the extreme, regardless of the idea that social learning theory posits removal of the children from abusive environments to be the best course of action. What guarantee is there that the children will end up in a better environment? The reality is that foster kids are far more likely to develop drug problems, engage in crime, drop out of school and end up in prison than children who come from two-parent homes. Children should be taught to forgive and they can learn from their parents’ bad examples in a positive way just as much as they might be at risk of following parents down the same bad path. Nothing is certain one way or another other than that splitting up families should be a last ditch option—not a first option.
Life course theory and social bond theories are both good perspectives to utilize in explaining why it is a bad idea to break up the family. Children need stability, even if the environment is less than perfect. They need to have social bonds, even if they are not the best. What family is the best? Additionally, parents who fear making a mistake might feel under immense pressure and might snap or engage in abusiveness, as strain theory explains (Siegel, 2018). Thus, in an effort to reform a situation, the reform can actually make the situation even worse or bring about that which it sought to avoid in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
From the deontological perspective, parents have a duty towards their children. It is not the state’s duty to rear the children of imperfect parents or to find new parents for those children. If anything the state has a duty to support families—not tear them apart. Instead of separating children from parents, it should be providing assistance to parents in the form of mandated counseling, drug abuse therapy, aggression management, and so on. These are the tools for providing help and hope. This is the moral way to address the problem.
The policy of taking children away from parents has not ethical support. It is not supported by the system of virtue ethics, which focuses on the development of character; it is not supported by duty ethics; it is not supported by utilitarianism. It is only supported by totalitarianism, which is not an ethical framework but rather a political one that concentrates all power in the hands of a state; parents are not permitted to make mistakes; if they do something wrong in the home, they are condemned and their children are taken away. It is a horrific system that Orwell thoroughly excoriated in Animal Farm and 1984. Yet it appears that this same horrific and unethical system is what is being promoted here in this scenario.
The impact on children removed from the home is what can be most damaging. Children removed from the home essentially have their entire worlds turned upside down. Everything they have known is shaken up. Children need stability and they need the social bond that only a family can provide. If they are stolen from their homes because their parents have issues that need sorting out (what parents do not?) then they are taught to trust no one and that there is no one to look out for them. They begin to feel that they are on their own and that there is no way to make it in such an unfair world. Indeed, the majority of them never find a lasting home again and are led into adulthood with no sense of self, poor education, no self-confidence or principles, and no bearing on how to achieve success. They are often as traumatized if not more traumatized by the experience of ending up in a foster family than by the domestic issues that they faced at home. At least at home they knew what to expect.
This is not to say that sometimes removing children is not necessary. In some cases, it is in their best interest to be removed. However, a single instance of violence or abuse is not enough evidence to suggest that removal is necessary. Counseling should be the first step. This would help to make sure the family stays together and that the social bond is strengthened rather than weakened. Weakening social bonds can lead one to a life of crime, according to social bond theory and life course theory. More crime only hurts society in the end. It puts increased costs on society in terms of needing more policing and more interventionism.
It also appears that the Department of Job and Family Services misapplied the social learning theory when planning and implementing the policy. Social learning theory posits that individuals learn from peers, groups and media. So simply removing a child from a home where abuse occurs one time is not a good application of this theory. First off, what will the child learn in the foster community? It is likely the child will learn more disillusionment. Secondly, what about the child’s peers and media consumption? These will also have an impact on what the child learns. Thirdly, social learning theory is just one theory among many. There is no reason to believe it is the end all be all among social and criminological theories to explain deviance. Social bond theory, life course theory and even trait theory can also be used to explain deviance and what can lead one to commit crime.
In conclusion, the Department of Job and Family Services is making a serious mistake in pursuing this policy and it should stop right now in its tracks before it makes a bad situation worse. The best way to address abuse in families that occurs one time is to intervene with counseling and support. Parents have a difficult job and they need to be given assistance when it becomes evident that they are struggling with issues that may be beyond their control for whatever reason. Maybe the parents are struggling with addiction or with emotional issues or with PTSD or with some mental disorder. They likely need counseling and family therapy could be a way to help everyone work through the issues they are facing. Family Services should be focused on keeping families together—not on driving them apart. When the first step taken by Family Services is to break up families their name becomes highly ironic.
References
Siegel, L. (2018). Criminology, 7th Ed. Cengage Learning.