of violence and neglect, and those in foster care may experience problems due to unstable family situations. Factors such as poverty that are frequently associated with PCE have a much stronger influence on children's intellectual and academic abilities than does exposure to cocaine in isolation. Thus, researchers have had difficulty in determining which effects result from PCE and which result from other factors in the children's histories. Historical context During 1980s and 1990s, a surge occurred in use of crack cocaine in US cities: the crack epidemic. During this time, fears arose throughout the country that PCE would create a generation of youth with severe behavioral and cognitive problems. Early studies in the mid-1980s reported that cocaine use in pregnancy caused children to have severe problems, including cognitive, developmental, and emotional disruption. These early studies had methodological problems, including small sample size, confounding factors such as poor nutrition, and use of other drugs by the mothers. The results of the studies, though, sparked widespread media discussion in the context of the new War on Drugs. For example, a 1985 study that showed harmful effects of cocaine use during pregnancy created a huge media buzz. The term "crack baby" resulted from the publicity surrounding crack and PCE. Media reports commonly emphasized that babies who had been exposed to crack in utero would never develop normally. The children were reported to be inevitably destined to be physically and mentally disabled for their whole lives. Babies exposed to crack in utero were written off as doomed to be severely disabled, and many were abandoned in hospitals. They were expected to be unable to form normal social bonds. Experts foresaw the development of a "biological underclass" of born criminals who would prey on the rest of the population. Crime rates were predicted to rise when the generation of crack-exposed infants grew up (instead, they dropped). The children were predicted to be difficult to console, irritable, and hyperactive, putting a strain on the school system. Charles Krauthammer, a columnist for The Washington Post wrote in 1989, "[t]heirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority." The president of Boston University at the time, John Silber, said, "crack babies ... won't ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God." These claims of biological inferiority played easily into existing class and racial biases. Reporting was often sensational, favoring the direst