This essay is written in the practice of abolitionism, to disentangle controlling myths from reality that overwhelmingly stifle expansive and honest discourse around the devastating practice of terminating parental rights (TPR). This essay seeks to deepen collective political analysis, unpacking structural racism and anti-Blackness which buttress family policing law, policy, and practice. The essay adds to family policing abolition discourse through rigorous excavation of framing and narrative patterns of history and utilizing a story-based strategy amplifying the perspective of those subjected to state violence of policing families. The essay seeks to reveal the death-making nature of TPR through true narratives, arguing sustainable, positive change for families cannot occur if TPR reigns as a mainstay threat and tool for decimating familial connection, and calls for an end to the state’s ability to inflict TPR on families.
Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. (n.d.). Pub. L. No. 105-89, 111 Stat. 2115 (1997).
4.
AlbertA.BainT.BricoE.DinkinsB.HoustonK. (2021). Ending the family death penalty and building a world we deserve. Columbia Journal of Race and Law, 11, 860–894. https://doi.org/10.52214/cjrl.v11i3.8753
5.
AlexanderM. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press.
BaughmanC.ColesT.FeinbergJ.NewmanH. (2021). The surveillance tentacles of the child welfare system. Columbia Journal of Race and Law, 11, 501–532. https://doi.org/10.52214/cjrl.v11i3.8743
9.
BillingsleyA.GiovanniJ. M. (1972). Children of the storm: Black children and American child welfare. Harcourt.
10.
BranchT. (2006). At Canaan’s edge: America in the king years, 1965-68. Simon & Schuster.
11.
BriggsL. (2020). Taking children: A history of American terror. University of California Press.
12.
CahnN.Heifetz HollingerJ. e. (2004). Families by law: An adoption reader. New York University Press.
13.
CarsonC. (2013). Martin’s dream: My journey and the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. St. Martin’s Press.
CoatesT.-N. (2015). Between the world and me. Spiegel & Grau.
16.
CoatesT.-N. (2024). The message. Random House.
17.
CoupetS. (2005). Swimming upstream against the great adoption tide: Making the case for impermanence. Capital University Law Review, 34, 405–458. https://lawecommons.luc.edu/facpubs/209/
18.
CreamerK.LeeA. (2022). Reimagining permanency: The struggle for racial equity and lifelong connections. Family Integrity and Justice, 1, 62–66.
19.
DavisA. (2003). Are prisons obsolete. Seven Stories Press.
20.
DettlaffA. (2023). Confronting the racist legacy of the American child welfare system: The case for abolition. Oxford University Press.
21.
DuboisW. (1903). The souls of black folk. A. C. McClurg & Co.
22.
DuBoisW. (1935). Black reconstruction. Harcourt Brace.
23.
FanonF. (1952). Black skin, white masks. Grove Press.
24.
GilmoreR. W. (2007). Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. University of California Press.
KatzS.LeeA. (2024). Lies my child welfare system told me: The critical importance of centering families’ voices in family policing legal advocacy. Family Court Review, 62, 790–805. https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12832
39.
KendiI. X. (2016). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. Bold Type Books.
40.
LindhorstT.LeighningerL. (2003). “Ending welfare as we know it” in 1960: Louisiana’s suitable home law. Social Service Review, 77, 564. https://doi.org/10.1086/378329
MappS. C.Smith Rotabi-CasaresK. (2023). State-sponsored child separation as cultural genocide: Implications for children’s rights and child adoption. Families in Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/10443894231200659
43.
McGowanB. G. (2014). Historical evolution of child welfare services. In MallonG. P.McCartt HessP. (Eds.), Child welfare for the twenty-first century: A handbook of practices, policies and programs (pp. 11–44). Columbia University Press.
44.
MenakemR. (2017). My grandmother’s hands: Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Central Recovery Press.
45.
MerrittD. H. (2021). Documenting experiences and interactions with Child Protective Services. Focus, 37, 3–10.
46.
MorrisonT. (1992). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination. Harvard University Press.
RaffoS. (2022). Liberated to the bone: Histories, bodies, futures. AK Press.
54.
RazM.EdwardsF. (2024). Termination of parental rights is common and should not be seen as a proxy for child abuse. Social Work, 69, 109–112. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swad047
55.
RitchieA. (2023). Practicing new worlds: Abolition and emergent strategies. AK Press.
56.
RobertsD. (1997). Killing the black body: Race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. Pantheon Books.
57.
RobertsD. (2001). Shattered bonds: The color of child welfare. Basic Civitas Books.
58.
RobertsD. (2022). Torn apart: How the child welfare system destroys black families and how abolition can build a safer world. Basic Books.
59.
RobertsD. (2024). The legacy of black mothers’ radical resistance of care. In SchenwarM.WilsonK. (Eds.), We grow the world together: Parenting toward abolition (pp. 81–87). Haymarket Books.
60.
RoseT. (2024). Metaracism. Basic Books.
61.
SankaranV.ChurchC. (2023). The ties that bind us: An empirical, clinical, and constitutional argument against terminating parental rights. Family Court Review, 61, 246–264. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4397994
62.
SelivanoffS.UrsT. (2024, Summer). Reimagining how cases end & families evolve. Family Justice Journal, Issue 3, 12–15.
63.
SpinakJ. (2023). The end of family court: How abolishing the court brings justice to children and families. New York University Press.
64.
StevensonB. (2014). Just mercy: A story of justice and redemption. Spiegel & Grau.
TrivediS. (2023, April). The Adoption and Safe Families Act is not worth saving: The case for repeal. Family Court Review, 61, 315–340. https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12711
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services—Administration on Children, Youth and Families, &. Children’s Bureau. (2023, May9). The AFCARS report: Preliminary FY¹ 2022 estimates as of May 9, 2023—No. 30. The Administration for Children and Families. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cb/afcars-report-30.pdf
69.
United States. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. (1968). Report of the national advisory commission on civil disorders. Bantam Books.
Whitt-WoolseyA.SprangG. (2014). When rights collide: A critique of the adoption and safe families act from a justice perspective. Child Welfare, 93, 111–134. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48623440
72.
XM. (1965). The autobiography of Malcolm X. Grove Press.
73.
ZinnH. (1980). A people’s history of the United States. Harper & Row.
