Claudia Rowe is the author of the new book Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care. She also has written the book The Spider and the Fly. She is a member of the editorial board of The Seattle Times.
Q: What inspired you to write Wards of the State?
A: As a journalist, I’d written a bit about the child welfare system and a lot about youth crime.
But not until I watched a foster girl being sentenced for murder did I begin to perceive a relationship between these two systems. She was 16, had been in and out of foster care since age 10, and her defense team was attempting to argue that this government system—foster care—shared culpability for her crime.
That intrigued me. And it brought to mind research I’d seen showing that 59 percent of kids who grow up in foster care have been locked up at least once by 26. Fifty-nine percent! For a government system that is purportedly about saving kids. Yet no one was talking about this.
Q: How did you choose the people whose stories you tell in the book?
A: I am fascinating by motivation – how a person understands the decisions they’re making, even if the rest of the world is utterly confounded by them. So first, I wanted to understand the experience of this girl -– was she unusual or typical?
As I dug into her case, interviewed dozens of other foster youths, and read through piles of research, I found four experiences common to the experience of virtually every foster kid who experienced lock up or homeless after aging out. I wanted to find young people whose lives could shed light on those experiences.
I was also looking for young people who could describe their internal, or emotional realities—which is not an easy thing for anyone to do, at any age.
I was lucky to find one man who’d become an award-winning writer while in prison, writing about his experiences in foster care and how they connected with where he sat behind bars. Most of the book’s major subjects came to me this way, through running down questions and encountering people who’d lived the answers.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I began Wards of the State in 2019, and the COVID-19 pandemic hit while I was still the early stages. I panicked. I thought, how will I ever meet the people I need to, when everyone in the world is shut inside?
Zoom turned out to be a boon to my reporting. I was able to forge connections and keep up with people around the country that way, until the pandemic had subsided enough for me to fly to Texas, New Orleans, and other places where my main characters lived.
There were many things that surprised me—particularly the number of kids who are adopted from foster care only to be returned to the system by their adoptive parents. I had never heard anyone speak about this, but it’s actually quite common. And it is devastating for kids.
Q: What do you think are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about the foster care system?
A: People imagine foster care either as a safety net that saves babies born into dangerous homes and whisks them into loving families. Or they view foster care as a system rife with abusers just waiting to prey on kids.
The reality is much more nuanced and, in some ways, scarier because the “villain” is a system, a machine, perpetuating a kind of mechanized, faceless brutality.
One thing most people do not realize is how the system actively sunders bonds by constantly moving kids around, and how damaging that is for them, on a neurological level. The National Academies of Science has affirmed this—it’s not some wild theory, but actual fact.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: By day, I write editorials and opinion columns for The Seattle Times—all of them about child welfare, juvenile justice, or public schools. So it’s fertile ground for ideas.
I tend to gnaw on something unconsciously for a long time before the idea jumps to the front of my mind with clarity. That’s the stage I’m in now, sifting through the puzzle pieces of reality until they fit together in a new way.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes, every young person in this book—no matter their twisted paths or questionable decisions—spoke with me because they wanted to improve the foster care system for the kids coming up behind them. I find that surprisingly hopeful.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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