Why The Bay Area Needs to Divest from Our Family Policing System

Written by Ashley

November whisked by in a whirlwind of fallen variegated leaves and crisp air. It was National Adoption (of humans) Month, and I spent it reflecting on my teen years in the Alameda County child welfare system. Or as I now refer to it, the family policing system, because it is an extension of law enforcement. The family policing system shares the three core values with law enforcement: surveillance, regulation, and punishment. Police officers conduct surveillance of disenfranchised citizens in their communities, then decide how to regulate their behavior, and then execute penalties when said behavior doesn’t align with the system’s goals. Here in the Bay, we talk a lot about Black Lives Matter, ACAB, Fuck the Police, etc. And that is why we need to talk about the family policing system in the nine counties that comprise the Bay. The overarching societal view of adoption is that it is a beautiful gift that adoptees should be grateful for. On the other hand, we have the view of adoption through the lens of class consciousness, and it is through this lens that we can see that foster care and adoption are industries that commodify children.

The legal framework of foster care was designed to separate families indefinitely. Bill Clinton’s 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act laid the foundation for financially incentivizing adoptions from foster care. The legislature enforces timelines that are often unreasonable for families to meet. When a child has been in foster care for longer than 15 months, their parents’ rights are at risk of termination. Here in California, we have one positive aspect of our foster care system, and that is that they do not terminate parental rights until they have adoptive parents lined up. That is the way it should be in all 50 states because, when parental rights are terminated with no adoptive parents lined up, that child is then placed in a legal limbo known as a “ward of the state.” They are considered “legally free” to adopt in these states where wards of the court are allowed. In California, we have children who are at “legal risk” of having their parents’ rights terminated if a set of adoptive parents expresses interest in that child.

However, just because California is more progressive than other states does not mean it is as progressive as it needs to be. Adoption should not be an end goal for any child in foster care because it needs to be abolished. Adoption primarily serves the purpose of blocking social infrastructure required for family preservation. The Bay lacks all the necessary infrastructure to keep families together. We have a housing crisis, a childcare affordability crisis, a shortage of family-based homeless shelters, and drug treatment centers with long wait lists.

One of the less-discussed reasons why homelessness goes unaddressed is because the people desire a perpetually existing class of disenfranchised citizens from whom they can extract babies. This is not exclusive behavior to the Bay; we experience it on a broader scale due to obscene housing costs. One of the common assumptions about the unhoused is that their substance abuse caused them to spiral and lose their housing. Sometimes, that is the case, but more often than not, it is the opposite. Most unhoused people started abusing substances to cope with the physical and emotional agony of being homeless. Being unhoused is physically painful because of the exposure to harsh weather, sleeping on concrete, and getting kicked by passersby. Being unhoused is exceptionally emotionally taxing because there is the looming threat of your tent getting set on fire.

Many Americans are only a few missed paychecks away from being unhoused. In the Bay, losing your home could take as little as one pay cut. Beating a drug addiction or alcoholism is nearly impossible when you don’t have safe housing. Instead of providing housing to families, social workers remove children and give them to more well-resourced foster families who have the end goal of adoption.

The devastating impact of the war on drugs is still evident in urban cities like San Francisco and Oakland. Despite efforts to reform drug policies, these cities continue to experience a significant number of drug-related arrests. Law enforcement disproportionately targets communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, perpetuating social inequalities and contributing to mass incarceration. The war on drugs focused primarily on punishment rather than treatment and rehabilitation. This has led to generational cycles of poverty, housing insecurity, and childhoods spent in the foster care system. While some efforts have been made here in the Bay to improve drug treatment options, there are still barriers in place. This includes limited availability of treatment facilities, long waiting lists, and insufficient funding for comprehensive programs.

Adoption caters to the desires of grown adults over children’s best interests. Everyone always talks about how expensive adoption is, and how $40,000 to purchase a child is extortion. And someone will inevitably chirp up: “Fun fact! Adoption is free when you adopt from foster care.” Yeah, that’s a neat fact. Here is another neat fact: Adoptees pay the price for their adoption regardless of whether they are adopted through a private agency for $40,000 or scooped up out of the foster care bargain bin. They pay with their mental and physical health. Maternal separation is a force to be reckoned with. Adoptees have high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse issues, psychiatric disorders, behavioral disorders, learning disorders, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation. If you are someone who is considering adoption someday, please think carefully about this. You are about to play Russian Roulette with the life of an innocent child. And you will contribute to and enable a system that blocks social infrastructure for those in need.