All this talk about “Families Belong Together” raises complicated feelings for me.
It’s not because I lack outrage at the humanitarian crisis that has taken hold at our border. I’m not conflicted about that at all. No, I’m wary because the simple fact of the matter is, if all families were kept together, mine would not exist.
So, I had to do some serious thinking. I want to be able to tell the activists marching in the street that I do agree that family separation as an immigration policy is abhorrent, without following a toxic self-reflective whataboutism back to myself. How do I square my place in this debate with my place in a system that separates children as part of its mission.
To satisfy this contradiction, I had to think back to my training. Yes, training. All foster-adoptive parents in Massachusetts have to attend a MAPP training course. Stephanie and I did, and it is not an exaggeration to say that this program changed our lives forever. Their mission is simple.
“DCF trains foster parents so they have the skills needed to nurture children who have experienced trauma and to work in partnership with birth families.”
This is a 30-hour series of small-group classes in which experienced social workers break it all down. We learned about the legal complexities of the foster system. We learned coping skills, for yourself and your future children. We learned about the wide variety of potential medical, education, and emotional complications we may face. We learned how to move forward as a family, together. Throughout the process, one crucial fact was drilled into us: separation is deeply traumatic. As adoptive parents it becomes our mission to help our children navigate this trauma, and try as best as we can to pave the road towards attachment and permanence.
But, if we know the process is deeply traumatic, and we know the scars from that trauma will last forever, why does it happen? The sole reason any child protective service intervenes so severely is to protect the well-being of children. To save lives. That’s the bar that must be cleared. Otherwise we’re inducing lifelong suffering without cause.
The children who were separated at the border during this shameful episode? They weren’t separated because their lives were in danger. They weren’t separated to shield them from abuse or neglect. Depending on who you ask, they were separated to reduce the flight risk of asylum-seekers, to send a deterring message across the globe, or just to piss off the libs. None of those justifications, not a single fucking one of them, clears the bar.
Children are separated in this country, by decree of the government, every day. But the difference between a humane system and a cruel one is that the former does so when it must, while the latter does so when it can.