Fostering Nation? Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood
Disadvantage explores the missteps and the promise of a century and
more of child protection efforts by Canadians and their governments. It
is the first volume to offer a comprehensive history of what life has
meant for North America's most disadvantaged Aboriginal and newcomer
girls and boys.
Gender, class, race, and (dis)ability are always important factors that
bear on youngsters' access to resources. State fostering initiatives
occur as part of a broad continuum of arrangements, from social
assistance for original families to kin care and institutions. Birth and
foster parents of disadvantaged youngsters are rarely in full control.
Children most distant from the mainstream ideals of their day suffer,
and that suffering is likely to continue into their own experience of
parenthood. That trajectory is never inevitable, however. Both
resilience and resistance have shaped Canadians' engagement with foster
children in a society dominated by capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal
power.
Fostering Nation? breaks much new ground for those interested in
social welfare, history, and the family. It offers the first
comprehensive perspective on Canada's provision for marginalized
youngsters from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Its
examination of kin care, institutions, state policies, birth parents,
foster parents, and foster youngsters provides ample reminder that
children's welfare cannot be divorced from that of their parents and
communities, and reinforces what it means when women bear
disproportionate responsibility for caregiving.
