Saving Children and Controlling Families: The Social and Political Determinants of Child Protection

• In Event: 595 - Regular Session. Sub-National Welfare State

Abstract

This study seeks to explain why some states separate children from their families and place them into foster care more frequently than do others. It argues that child protection is a primarily paternalist form of social control, suggesting important differences in the configuration of forces structuring policy than can be observed for either primarily punitive or primarily redistributive social policies. Using data from the Adoption and Foster Care Reporting and Analysis System, this study finds that states with more punitive criminal justice regimes have lower rates of foster care entry, while states with more generous redistributive programs have slightly higher rates of foster care entry. Multilevel count models provide support for viewing child protection as distinctly paternalist. States with high levels of political liberalism, low levels of perceived racial threat, and low levels of exposure to known causes of child maltreatment such as hunger and parental unemployment have high levels of foster care entry. States with high levels of political conservatism, high levels of perceived racial threat, and high levels hunger and unemployment have low rates of foster care entry. These findings demonstrate that institutional and political differences between states, not material differences in population conditions, are the primary drivers of differences in rates of child protection intervention between states. I suggest that viewing child protection as a paternalist form of social control animated by political liberalism and racial pathos explain why some states intervene to separate children from families more frequently than do others.

Author

• Frank Edwards, University of Washington