Unveiling Forgotten Shadows: The Disturbing Truth Behind America’s Orphan Crisis in Kristen Martin’s Latest Exposé
The children Martin writes about are often not technically orphans with two dead parents but rather children who live in extreme poverty whose living parent often suffers from mental illness or substance abuse. Throughout this country’s history, these children have consistently been removed from their families rather than having their parents offered treatment and support. (Full disclosure: I am the foster mom to two of the kinds of kids Martin describes.)
This is a major point of her book: that systems that separate families in the name of protecting children get it wrong. Families struggling with poverty and addiction need access to resources, not to have their children forcibly removed from them. The problems inherent in families’ struggles are societal, not individual, requiring a societal approach, not a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” one.
