Issac Bailey | No simple family solutions

A reader said I would have been better off raised in foster care.

It was in reaction to a piece in which I presented research that showed kids in marginally abusive homes - where two professionals disagree about the proper course of action - fare much better in those homes than in foster care.

I said that given the domestic violence, tough corporal punishment and financial struggles, my early childhood home likely would be described as marginally abusive. That's when the reader suggested I was blinded by loyalty to my parents.

Never mind I also wrote that my oldest brothers and sisters, those who grew up during the hardest times, are the ones who have grown up to lead productive lives while the younger ones, who grew up in a stable two-parent environment, are the ones who have run into trouble.

Which brings me to a response to a recent column about what I saw in Family Court. It was one of the rare, good days, when the defendants, S.C. Department of Social Services officials, guardian ad litem and the judge jointly celebrated happy endings.

A volunteer for the guardian ad litem program took offense to my mentioning the research about marginally abusive homes. She said she had falsely assumed I was a child advocate and argued there was no such thing as marginally abusive or simple fights, like the one between two brothers, which led to their being taken into foster care even though police officers did not believe their removal was necessary.

I'm not a child advocate if it means hewing to only one line of thinking. Many people grow up healthy in households that would be deemed abusive by outsiders while others endure severe abuse in seemingly stable homes.

It's also true that while there are many foster parents who love foster kids as they do their own, there are too many who create environments worse than the ones from which some children are removed, which is why researchers found reason to study marginally abusive homes in more depth. Foster care sometimes does more harm than good.

I've come across hundreds of case files over the past several years. That's why I know that making a "perfect" decision doesn't guarantee a perfect outcome, or even a good one. But unnecessarily removing kids from homes increases the prevalence of child abuse.

And that's why I don't worry about labels.

Because unless we are willing to look into every dark corner and take seriously research that challenges our assumptions, things won't improve.