 They actually can provide a really critical backstop. And when I went into the child welfare bureaucracy, I was basically given an option. I could keep complaining, in which case I would be removed not just from my mom's home, but from my grandparents' home and placed with a stranger in foster care. Or I could stop complaining. And, of course, that worked out for me because my grandma, as readers will know, was this extraordinarily powerful woman who said, no, you're going to come live with me and I don't give a crap what those people say.