In today’s society, many children face many challenges from a young age in regard to their living circumstances and conditions. This correlates to how they live at home, the people who are in the household, and how they interact with one another. The expectations for families are that they provide security and stability. I believe that children belong with their parents; taking children away from their parents is very traumatic, and the care they receive in a foster care home may not be in the best interest of children. The Walls children are better off being together with their parents.
Children belong with their parents because a parent’s role is very important to children’s growth as their presence promotes mental, verbal, and emotional development. Children demonstrate positivity and confidence with social skills, and having a healthy parent present in their everyday lives is crucial for their upbringing. As with the Walls family, Rosemary and Rex are constant figures in their children’s lives. The single most important influence in a child’s life is having a family that will be there and provide for them as best as possible, whether it is a lot or a little. Having constant figures in children’s lives is important as it provides them with consistency and emotional security. Children thrive when their parents are actively involved in their lives. For example, Jeannette and Brian thrived in reading as they were at a higher level reading level than other children in their age group. This was due to the fact they started reading at an early age and read a lot of books. “Researchers and writers have noted that parental involvement is associated with academic achievement (“Defining Parental Involvement…..”). It was to their advantage that the parents couldn’t afford toys because the children thrived in reading; it was their source of entertainment, and it kept them busy.
The Walls are involved in their children’s lives as they take them to the library where they borrow a lot of books and teach them to read. The father sits with the children; together they go through the dictionary looking up words. The father takes the children swimming and teaches Jeannette how to swim by letting her sink, rescuing her, and throwing her back in the water. Even though she wants to give up, her father encourages her to keep going, and finally, she is able to swim. As a family, they go out to dinner, and the mother took the children shopping, even though it is at a thrift store.
In the later part of The Glass Castle, the Walls family, were visited by a representative from the Child Welfare Office because someone had reported that there were neglected children in their house. If the Child Welfare office had followed through with an investigation and it turned out that the children had to leave their parents, then they would most likely be split up and sent to different foster care homes. The effects of children being separated from their parents and families can be devastating “…because of the negative outcomes associated with removing children from their homes, it is not uncommon to hear skepticism about the effectiveness of foster care.” (“Changes in Externalizing and Internalizing…...”). Any time that children spend in temporary care may be harmful to their growth, development, and their well-being. It causes disruption in the continuity that they are used to.
If the Walls children were separated from their parents and then separated again from each other, it would be very traumatic for them. Parental separation can cause negative effects, such as guilt and blame, as well as feeling sad, which leads to isolation, loneliness, and social difficulties. Children in foster care are moved from one home to another, which causes uncertainty, instability, and unnecessary trauma. These are the negative aspects of foster care, and if children are with their parents they would not have to go through any of these effects. If children are not given a secure and parental environment they will struggle with learning, which could have a lifelong effect on their behavior and the ability to have new relationships in their later life, “Other studies have shown separation leading to increased aggression, withdrawal, and cognitive difficulties” (“washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/…..”).
Foster care fails children as they are moved around a lot and not provided with what is best for them. Foster care provides a temporary home until the children can go back to their parents or get adopted. “The time away spent moving from home to home leaves vulnerable kids in a state of uncertainty for long periods of time” (adoption.org/negatives-foster-care). Just as children make any kind of adjustment, then they go back to their parents or another foster care home. All of this moving around and adjusting to different environments is very difficult for the children. Just as they get used to one place then they have to move somewhere else. This is too much for children to cope with, especially younger children; older children are able to cope a little better.
If the Child Welfare Office had come back to investigate the Walls family and decided that the children would be better off being in the Welfare system, and put in a foster care home, the children’s outcome would be much different. They would most likely be separated and sent to different homes. They would suffer the hardship of being separated from their parents and the separation would have a greater negative effect on Maureen since she was the youngest. The children would have to adjust to being with new sets of guardians, adjust to the home they would be sent to, and adhere to the rules and guidelines of the foster parents and the welfare system. Rosemary and Rex might never be able to get their children back if they were not able to comply with the plans the Child Welfare Office had set for them. The children might have some psychological effects, such as feeling sad, being isolated, feeling lonely, and having social difficulties
The Walls children did not grow up under the best circumstances: having dysfunctional parents, being short on cash a lot of the time, not having enough food, and moving around a lot. However, one thing was for certain they were together as a family. When they moved they moved together as a family, and the children were not forced away from their parents. The Walls did not have much family or many friends, which made their family bond stronger. The siblings were very close, relied on each other, and were always there for one another. Jeannette and Brian, in particular, were very close to each other and would ride their bikes and explore together. Later on in the story, the bond between Lori and Maureen became stronger. The siblings could count on each other and help each other whenever possible, especially when they started saving money for Lori to move to New York. Even with all that the family went through, the children grew up to be strong, educated, caring, and successful individuals.