An Indianapolis Star editorial -- Feb. 11, 2000

She and three younger brothers entered Indiana's foster care system in 1992 because of parental neglect. By December, Amanda had lived in 11 foster homes and had been removed from one adoptive family because of abuse.

Combined with the removal from her birth parents' home, Amanda had moved on average once every nine months for the first 10 years of her life.

Her brothers had fared little better. One had been in nine foster homes; the other two in eight.

The siblings had been apart for so long that they had little emotional attachment to one another. To help them forge bonds, their adoption caseworker began taking them on weekly outings.

But the children and more than 11,400 others like them in the state's foster care and institutional systems are at risk of never being able to bond with anyone.

For years, studies have warned about the dangers of children drifting among foster homes. The American Psychiatric Association in 1994 specifically cited foster care drift as a cause of reactive attachment disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The inability to bond with others can have devastating consequences. Researchers have referred to children who've experienced multiple placements as "psychopaths in the making."

A study by the National Association of Social Workers found that 80 percent of inmates in Illinois prisons had at one time been foster children. Other studies have found disproportionate numbers of former foster children in homeless missions, runaway shelters and drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics.

The break up of the American family seems to be the leading cause of not only imprisonment but drug usage and emotional illness.

The more kids raised in broken homes, sent to foster care, or even raised by single moms seems to be the fuel that is causing our social structure to be so dysfunctional.

Even though caseworkers know of the consequences, they still frequently move children from home to home. Child advocates say the moves are seldom warranted and at times violate state policy.

"Caseworkers still move kids because they've become 'too attached' to their foster parents," says James Kenny, a Rensselaer psychologist and a foster parent for 25 years. "I want to tell them, 'You've become too attached to your husband. We're going to give you a new one tonight.'"

Yet, caseworkers are not solely to blame. The problems are systemic, and the responsibility for continuing to allow children to wander among homes must be spread throughout the Division of Family and Children.

Women's Freedom Network

Conservapedia Corporal punishment is the infliction of physical pain in response to wrongdoing, typically by methodically striking a particular part of the offender's body with an implement such as a paddle, or with the open hand. Its purpose is to correct, reform and deter the miscreant, and to deter others from similar misconduct. Spanking of children and teens, whether at home or at school, is the most usual kind of corporal punishment. Parents are urged by the Bible to spank their offspring when they misbehave, for instance in Proverbs 13:24 (He who withholds the rod hateth his son). Darrel Reid, head of Focus on the Family - Canada (an evangelical Christian group) said that "The theological underpinning for family corporal punishment is tied up with the responsibility that God gives families for raising the young. You can find it particularly in the early books of the Bible, where God says your responsibility is not just nurturing but also correcting them."[1] Some people oppose the spanking of children, and in some countries (e.g. Sweden) it is illegal even for parents to do so. Swedish Member of Parliament Sixten Pettersson stated "In a free democracy like our own, we use words as arguments, not blows. We talk to people and do not beat them. If we can't convince our children with words, we shall never convince them with violence". In some states of the United States a foster parent may not spank a foster child. Claiming to draw upon the latest research on brain development, a "therapist", Alice Miller, attacks childhood corporal punishment and asserts that spanking causes emotional blindness and leads to mental barriers that cut off awareness and the ability to learn new ways of acting. If this cycle repeats itself, the grown child will perpetrate the same "abuse" on later generations, Miller alleges. Judicial corporal punishment is the infliction of physical pain upon a person's body as punishment for a crime or infraction, such as by caning or whipping. This kind of penalty remains on the statute book in several Asian, Middle Eastern and African countries. The last US State to retain whipping as an official punishment for crime was Delaware, in the 1950s.[4] In a broad sense, corporal punishments include flogging, beating, branding, mutilation, blinding, and the use of the stock and pillory. The Torah (Judaism) describes some forms of corporal punishment for certain crimes and sins. The Bible contains seven verses that relate to the spanking of children. Source: conservapedia

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