Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The A B C of Foster-Family Care for Children
The law classifies children who come under its protection. One whose family can not support him or who has lost his family is dependent. If his parents willfully fail to provide for him or treat him cruelly, he is neglected. If in response to a bad situation he rebels or breaks some law, he is delinquent. In reality these classifications are vague and overlapping. As definitions they are both inaccurate and dangerous. Labels have a way of sticking, and if there is one thing that needs emphasis more than another it is that situa tions and persons are too complex to be readily explained or precisely classified. There is a common impression that the majority of de pendent children are orphans, but at present the full orphan is rare in social work. The foundling with no known relatives is equally unusual, and cases of abandonment by parents of children not already in the care of some agency are not common. Parents SO immoral or incompetent that they should under no circumstances care for their children are the exception. Nor would the unmarried mother swell very largely the number of dependent children if she could always obtain adequate support for her child without parting with him.
An inspection of applications made to almost any children's agency would Show a number of children who must be provided for temporarily, and a few for whom provision must be permanent because of the physical or mental disability of parents. Many applications would be the result of poverty, usually complicated by sickness and unemployment. A surprising number would be the direct or indirect outcome of the separation of parents or of the desertion of one parent.
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