At first glance, these child murders may seem an inexplicable, isolated tragedy; a closer look reveals that this outrage was constructed, piece by thoughtless piece, by the modern welfare state.

In It for the Money

The first error came with the selection of Bowman as the adoptive parent. She was obviously a negligent and seriously deranged person who never should have been approved for adoption. Well, who approved her? The adoption had been supervised from start to finish by a government agency, the District of Columbia’s Child and Family Services. In theory, it was supposed to establish that Renee Bowman was a suitable parent. In practice it didn’t even notice, or care, that she had a criminal record—she threatened a 72-year-old with bodily harm—a rather glaring instance of “government failure” by this notoriously incompetent agency.

The next link in the tragedy concerns Bowman’s motivation for adopting the children. If she did not love children, if she saw them as a burden, why had she bothered with the expense and effort of adopting them? The answer is money. In 1980 Congress approved a subsidy program to provide payments to parents who adopt children from foster care. I’m sure lawmakers thought it was a useful idea. If the federal government can buy tanks and bombs, after all, why can’t it buy adoptions?

Well, it does buy adoptions, but not high-quality ones. Worthy parents adopt out of love, conviction, enthusiasm, and dedication. They are willing to make real sacrifices for their children. Putting money on the table changes the mix of motivations. Yes, loving parents will still appear, but insensitive people who view children as an economic commodity also come forth. Renee Bowman was one of these insensitive, grasping types. She was being paid $2,400 a month by the federal government to be listed as the mother of these three girls; altogether she collected $152,000. “This woman was in it for the money,” said the prosecutor at the trial. “And by killing the children, keeping them literally on ice, the money continued to flow.”

Keeping Adoptions Low, Abuse High

Officials point out that without adoption subsidies to attract parents, children would languish in the state foster care systems. There’s some truth to this, but it exposes another flaw in the state system of handling orphans. A survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found there were nearly 600,000 women seeking to adopt children, a figure over four times the total of 129,000 children in foster care available for adoption. The oversupply of willing parents holds for all categories of children, including older children, black children, and children with disabilities. But under government management, adoption from foster care has become a tortuous, burdensome process demeaning to prospective parents. The government agencies are so focused on trying to apply a host of bureaucratic regulations that they repel many, especially independent-minded individuals critical of silly red tape and micromanagement. The result is that children remain stuck in foster care. Even so, hundreds of thousands of people would like to adopt them.

The severity of government impediments to adoption was documented by a study undertaken in 2005 by Listening to Parents, a nonprofit research group. It followed 1,000 prospective parents who called a public child-welfare agency seeking to adopt. Out of this initial group, only 36 adoptions occurred.

Having inadvertently contrived a deplorably low adoption rate, government sought to correct the problem by applying government’s inevitable fix-all: throwing more money at the problem, in the form of adoption subsidies. They created a situation of moral hazard where a person like Renee Bowman might adopt children primarily for the money, and, lacking love and a sense of responsibility, might neglect and abuse them.

Bowman’s was not an isolated case. Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy reported in February 2009 that in the previous eight months at least seven adopted children in D. C. had been killed, their adoptive parents charged or suspected in the homicides. And those are just the murder cases—that we know about. Given the number of children in Washington, D.C.’s adoption subsidy program, it’s fair to wonder if neglect and abuse short of murder are far more widespread than anyone would like to imagine.

This brings us to the most shocking failure in this sorry episode. After the deadly consequences of the misguided adoption subsidy became screaming headlines, officials did nothing! They didn’t close down the program. They didn’t fire, fine, or imprison employees responsible for the miscues. They didn’t resign in shame and embarrassment. Jobs and careers depend on this program: It’s in officials’ economic self-interest to downplay its problems. The same is true of the pressure groups that represent parents taking the subsidy. Their attitude was captured by a Washington Post reporter: “Even with limited oversight, most children end up in safe and supportive families, advocates said.”

In the old days, before we got hardened to welfare-state abuses, we would have said that a system that resulted in even one murdered child was unacceptable. Today, the self-interested participants of the welfare state are content with a program where “most” of the children aren’t slain.

The solution to the travesties being committed by government child welfare agencies lies right before us: Move away from the welfare state as fast as we can. Turn the problems of orphans, foster care, and adoption back to private charitable and commercial entities, unsubsidized by tax money and largely unregulated.

Will errors occur in this voluntary system? Undoubtedly they will, but they wouldn’t be met with institutional shrugs of the shoulders. The voluntary system would have this advantage: If a private agency was implicated in a tragic malfunction, donors and customers would be free to turn away from it and the agency would disappear.

According to Sachs, F. A. Hayek, “the Austrian-born free-market economist, . . . suggested that high taxation would be a ‘road to serfdom,’ a threat to freedom itself.” There is now, however, “a rich empirical record to judge [this] scientifically.” “The evidence” (he says) comes from comparing the Nordic social democracies (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland) with the Anglophone developed countries (Canada, the United States, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand).

The Nordics (he says) have met the challenge of “sustainable development”: they have reconciled “the . . . power of markets” with the reassurance and protection of (governmental) “social insurance.” They “combine . . . respect for market forces with . . . anti-poverty programs.” And “[t]he results . . . are astoundingly good” for households with the lowest incomes.

Thus Nordic income per head of working-age population is 4.5 percent higher than in the lower-taxed Anglophone countries. The Nordic unemployment rate is only slightly higher than the Anglophone rate (6.3 percent versus 5.2 percent). The Nordics have far higher budget surpluses as a proportion of GDP. In short, the Nordic territories “outperform” the Anglophones on average (in terms of these measures).

“Despite [their] high taxation,” the Nordic countries are highly dynamic: “they spend lavishly on higher education” and on R&D. While only 1.8 percent of Anglophone GDP goes to R&D, the Nordics spend 3.0 percent—two-thirds as much again. Sweden has the world’s highest ratio: “nearly 4 percent of GDP.” All, “especially Sweden and Finland,” have gained “global competitiveness” through the information-technology and communications revolution. In addition, the Nordics have “relatively low” taxes on capital.

In the Nordic areas 27 percent of GDP (on average) goes to “social purposes” via government; the Anglophone figure is only 17 percent. Nordic labor policies direct the “low-skilled” to “key quality-of-life areas such as child care, health, and support for the elderly and disabled.” The Nordic “poverty rate” is 5.6 percent—less than half that of the Anglophones, which is 12.6 percent.

Thus (according to Sachs) high taxes and high “social spending” have not “crippled prosperity” in the Nordic territories: “Von Hayek was wrong. In strong . . . democracies, a generous social-welfare state [is] a road to . . . fairness, . . . equality and international competitiveness,” not serfdom.

Now, Sachs, of course, speaks for U.S. government officials and their academic advisers. All have a vested interest in raising taxes and government spending and in increasing the numbers of government officials, evermore. Let us, however, “scientifically” take another look at the “rich empirical record.”

(What we’ll find: Scandinavia, especially Sweden, is an official’s dream come true. On average, over half of people’s income is confiscated. It is Scandinavia’s long-established integration into the growing international economy that has in fact continued to supply Scandinavians with their incomes, which officials then tax away.)

1. Between 1960 and 1990: Among OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, those with the largest government sectors (spending in excess of 60 percent of GDP) had the lowest growth rates. Those with the smallest proportion of government spending (less than 25 percent of GDP) had the highest growth rates—more than four times faster.

Between 1990 and 2005: the average overall tax burden came to 61 percent in Sweden, 58 percent in Denmark, and 55 percent in Finland.

2a. Between 1970 and 2003, in OECD rankings of economies: Denmark declined from third to seventh place; Sweden Finland rose from 17th place in 1970 to ninth in 1989, then fell back to 15th in 2003. fell from fifth to 14th.

2b. Over the same period (1970–2003) Ireland shot up from 22nd to fourth. In 1989 Irish taxes and government spending equaled 53 percent of its GDP. In 2006 this had fallen to 35 percent.

2c. In 2004: Irish productivity per working hour was nearly 26 percent higher than in Finland, just over 29 percent greater than in Sweden, and a whopping 43.2 percent above the Danes.

3. During 1995–2004: Compared with Sweden, the lowest incomes rose more than six times faster in Britain and more than eight times faster in Ireland. In 2004, 20 percent of Swedish households fell below the official “poverty line,” compared with around 18 percent in Britain and just under 15 percent in Ireland. In short, those with the very lowest incomes improved their position much, much more in lower-taxed Britain and Ireland than in higher-tax Sweden.

Over the same period, when the rise in the lowest incomes is compared with the average increase: Britain did 2.5 times better than Sweden, while Ireland was 2.35 times better. In other words, the lowest incomes came far, far closer to the average in low-tax Britain and Ireland than in high-tax Sweden.

4. Between 1981 and 2003: private-sector employment rose 56 percent in low-tax Ireland. There was a 12 percent rise in Denmark—in very low-productivity “employment” (see above, 2c.) But in high-tax Sweden and Finland, no new private-sector jobs were created. In other words, the government took the entire increase in the labor force over some 22 years. With the same number of people employed in the private sector and low growth rates overall, real incomes just about stagnated. From these stagnant real incomes, people had to pay ever-increasing taxes and support ever-increasing government officials and ever-increasing government spending.

5. According to a working paper prepared for the European Central Bank in 2003: Sweden, Finland, and Denmark have the most inefficient government sectors of all OECD countries in terms of the use of inputs. In Sweden the same level of output could be obtained for only 57 percent of the input. For Denmark this figure is 61 percent, for Finland, 62 percent. In other words, some 43 percent of the labor and other resources “used” in the Swedish government sector are—in effect—idle. The proportion effectively idle in the Danish government sector is 39 percent, and 38 percent in Finland.

In Sweden doctors saw an average of nine patients a day in 1975. In 2005 they saw four—or less than half as many. More than half of all patients have to wait 12 weeks to be examined and then at least as long again for treatment. In short, for most Swedish patients, from just making the appointment to seeing the doctor to actually getting treated, there’s a gap of some 24 weeks at least. (You’d better not fall sick in Sweden.)

6. Even in the later 1980s, Swedish doctors worked only some 57 percent of the hours that American doctors worked. And as early as the 1970s, doctors, dentists, lawyers, and so on worked only a few months each year—to avoid astronomical tax rates. By the 1970s retailers asked buyers: “With or without receipt?” while house painters, mechanics, plumbers, and more all operated largely in a cash economy. Books were already being published on avoiding tax for those on average incomes.

7a. The actual unemployment rate is disguised by classifying large numbers under other heads: (a) make-work in the government sector, (b) “early retirement,” (c) long-term “sick,” and (d) university “students” who are in fact avoiding open unemployment.

7b. The so-called “unemployment trap” is extremely high in Denmark and Sweden. When necessary expenses like transport, food, and so on are included, the lowest take-home pay is lower than the government payments received.

8a. All large Swedish companies, save one, were established in the late nineteenth century or in the late 1920s. Business taxes are very low, but they overwhelmingly favor larger established companies. Unincorporated-business income is taxed as heavily as personal income, but dividends and company incomes at much lower rates. Taxes on capital gains, however, are the highest in the world in Denmark and Finland.

8b. Labor mobility is low, which reduces productivity. People are stuck in unsuitable jobs. Labor input is also far less in practice: Some one-fifth of the workforce is absent, on average—double the proportion in the 1970s. In 1988 Swedes took an average of 26 days of sick-leave; this was still true in 2002. In addition, there are numerous other grounds for people to be absent with pay.

“One Size Fits All”

9a. The “welfare” state must operate on the principle of “one size fits all,” of course. Thus in Sweden the state supplies all childcare, schooling, medical services, and aged care, except for a minuscule proportion. But even here, “private” suppliers are paid from taxes. Swedish legislation virtually prohibits direct private purchase of alternatives.

9b. The tax system virtually forces women with children to work, so their children can go to state child care. This goes from preschool to after-school for older children. All this raises “employment” figures: Child-minders are “employed” while mothers at home are not.

“Private” childcare is state-funded and has to charge the same low fees as the state system. “Private” child-minders are also paid by the state. Officials can ban any adult from caring for children in his or her own home. Even family arrangements have to be reported under threat of prosecution; the proposed carer—even granny—is investigated (for a criminal record) and inspected annually.

9c. Up to 1992 there were virtually no private schools in Sweden. Then “vouchers” were introduced. “Private” schools are forbidden to charge fees. Thus taxes pay for all “private” schools, and they are prevented from competing on costs.

9d. The overwhelming bulk of people have to depend on state-supplied medical services. Government entities now buy an extremely small percentage of hospital services and aged-care services from “private” suppliers. The latter’s costs are lower, of course, and the entities’ employees are happier than when they were part of the government. Only a handful of the extremely wealthy have private health insurance.

9e. “Pensions” are paid from payroll taxes. There are both flat-rate and earnings-related pensions. In the 1990s Swedish officials required all employees, additionally, to pay a minute fraction of their incomes into “private” pension funds or into a government fund in default. All such payments are channeled through a new set of officials; payers and funds have no direct contacts at all. This minuscule “change” is seen by politicians, officials, their academic advisers, journalists, and so on as earth-shaking. It has just been announced that future state pensions will be well below those being paid currently. Only a handful of the wealthy have private pension plans with an insurance company.

9f. One aspect of the Swedish “welfare state” is particularly disturbing: the power that official “social workers” have over children. Children can be removed from parents and put into foster care for a wide variety of reasons. Disputes go before special administrative tribunals, not the ordinary courts. So the whole situation is stacked in favor of the official and against the parent. Foster parents receive tax-free payments from the state. In high-tax Sweden this is a huge advantage, which results in really good incomes.

A comparison with England underlines the power officials have in Sweden. In November 2001 some 21,500 employees of municipal social services in Sweden were assigned to “individual and family care.” This amounted to one children’s social worker per 414 people of all ages. In England in 2005 there were some 33,980 staff (full-time equivalent) who dealt with children and families. This came to one such official for every 1,484 people in England. Thus, pro rata, Sweden has nearly 3.6 times as many children’s “welfare” officials as in England. Are Swedes really some four times more prone to child abuse and neglect than the English?

Not surprisingly, when it comes to children forcibly removed from their parents and put into official care, Sweden runs well ahead, pro rata. In 2003 in Sweden there was one child in official hands for every 598 Swedes. In England in 2005 there was one child in “care” for every 836 residents. Thus—pro rata—there were 40 percent more children in Sweden who were officially taken away from their parents as compared with England. Are Swedish parents really 40 percent more incompetent and feckless than English parents?

State-Dominated Housing

10. Housing in Sweden: Government officials dominate here too. Only some 39 percent of all “dwellings” are owner-occupied. Some 21 percent are privately owned rental housing; 20 percent are rental housing provided by municipally owned companies; and 17 percent are cooperatives. The latter received state subsidies from the 1920s to the late 1990s. Municipal companies receive state subsidies from general taxation and some capital from municipal taxation. They pay only a “reasonable”—that is, subsidized—interest rate on this last. Their income is made up from rent and subsidies.

Thus around 37 percent of all “dwellings” in Sweden are built from taxation, largely or entirely. Only some 60 percent of housing is provided completely through private saving.

Anyone may rent a municipal flat—there are no income limits. Municipal companies are obliged by statute to provide housing for those with lower incomes. Swedish officials regard “income segregation” as undesirable so they accept higher-income tenants too.

In municipal housing, officials ask tenants to assign values to such things as the location; their living area; its standard, general amenities; convenience to state transport; and so on. Rents are set by negotiations between the municipal company and its tenants’ association, but rents also have to include an allowance for continued maintenance and cover the expenses of the highest-cost municipal company. Private rents are higher and are negotiated between landlords’ and tenants’ associations.

Private tenants may appeal their rents to an administrative tribunal. In 90 percent of cases the tribunal simply decides whether the rent is “reasonable.” In 10 percent of disputes the private flat is compared with a local municipal flat and 5 percent is then added to the private rent.

11. Exports: Norway is one of the world’s largest oil exporters from the oilfields deep under the North Sea. An American audience cannot know this, of course, so here Sachs is silent. In 2005, 68 percent of Norwegian exports consisted of oil and natural gas.

Sweden, Finland, and Denmark are overwhelmingly integrated into the global economic order. In 2005, foreign trade—exports and imports combined—equalled 90 percent of total output in Sweden; 80 percent in Finland; and 88.5 percent in Denmark. In short, all three territories are simply sectors of the world economy and have been since the late nineteenth century.

Thus their major export goods were developed mainly in the late nineteenth century and in some cases, very much earlier.

Let us take Swedish exports for the eight months from January to August 2006. Pharmaceutical goods, chemicals, metal manufactures, industrial machinery, optical goods—all together these equaled 28 percent of the total. Swedish firms have exported these items since the late nineteenth century. Timber and its products, iron ores, other minerals, and iron and steel together came to 22 percent. Sweden has exported these goods since the late fifteenth century at least. Telecommunications came to 14.3 percent. This includes telephones, made in Sweden since the late nineteenth century. “Transport equipment”—Volvos and Saabs—equaled 13.8 percent. Sweden has exported these since the late 1920s.

Advanced telecommunications also formed only a small percentage of Finnish exports in 2006; the bulk were already in place in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Electrical and optical products came to 24.5 percent; wood-pulp, paper, and wood products equaled 16.2 percent; basic metals, machinery, and equipment formed 26.2 percent.

The same picture is found in Denmark in 2005. Exports of foodstuffs (butter, cheese, bacon, fish, and so on), timber, and other primary products—important since at least the late nineteenth century—came to 15.8 percent. Medicines, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals came to 13.7 percent. Machinery and instruments—many items produced in Denmark since the late nineteenth century came to 26.4 percent. Textiles, clothing, furniture, and glassware—distinctively Danish—equaled 9.7 percent, energy, 10.3 percent. (For further reading, see Lorraine Mullally and Neil O’Brien, eds., Beyond the European Social Model, 2006, available online at htttp://tinyurl.com/ynqnp.)

12. Thus it is by participating in a growing international economy that Scandinavians produce increasing outputs. These are largely taxed away and allocated by bureaucracy. People’s continuing toil puts growing resources into government officials’ hands.

As a government adviser, Sachs must naturally see officials’ activities as the source of all goodness, including international competitiveness. The causation is rather the other way about. Successful integration into the international economic order produces output that officials then tax and remove from the people. Then officials (under the relevant authorizing legislation) use the revenues to support themselves (and their families), and to spend money or disburse it to authorized recipients under various authorized headings, namely, pensions, other incomes, schooling, medical and hospital services, aged care, child and after-school care, and so on. From the standpoint of government officials, and therefore their academic advisers, this is a delightful paradise. Naturally, therefore, Sachs describes this as “a generous social-welfare state . . . fairness. . . equality . . . international competitiveness.” This is exactly how it appears to the officials involved.

Finally, my editor asks me: “Why do the Nordics put up with it? What about the high disincentives?” One answer is: precisely the almost complete integration into the international economy. The output comes from large and small firms integrated into international production. These firms and their employees can hardly vanish into an underground economy. They must remain visible. Even if the firms, as legal entities, acquire another “nationality”—as many have done—their operations and employees remain in Scandinavia. This is because of the skills and expertise built up over the decades and centuries. Swedish steel must continue to be manufactured in Sweden. Volvos made in Portugal lack some intangible something compared with Volvos made in Sweden. Bang & Olufsen made in Bulgaria sounds dubious; made in Denmark, it does not.

Moreover, heavy taxes are levied on individuals, not businesses. The incomes are captured at the point where there can be least escape.

Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century argues convincingly that the private sector is better able to care for these children. It includes 15 essays that discuss the history of children’s homes, or private orphanages, and the policy reforms needed to revive them (only a handful remain).

McKenzie, who grew up in an orphanage in the 1950s (and who rates his experience very highly), challenges the widespread notion that orphanages are undesirable places. He asks why it is considered acceptable for wealthy parents to send their children to boarding schools to receive education and moral instruction, but inappropriate to send children from unsafe, abusive homes to similar institutions. He presents findings from his own survey of middle-aged and elderly alumni from nine orphanages, almost all of whom look back on their orphanage experiences favorably. And interestingly, most of them outpace the general population in terms of education, income, and attitude toward life.

The essayists identify several reasons why orphanages have declined in this century. As poverty rates fell in the 1950s and 1960s, fewer parents had to abandon children they could not afford to keep. The social work profession has also disparaged orphanages and vigorously lobbied to expand state foster care. And the cost of running orphanages has increased because of new liability laws that hold institutions accountable for any harm children might incur while working. Most orphanages have reduced or eliminated child labor, such as on-site farm work, that at one time reduced their operating costs. Yet the essayists note that such work once instilled the values of discipline, responsibility, and team effort. Indeed, critics often cite “regimentation” as the chief drawback of orphanages. Yet this is what former orphans believe is their chief strength.

Rethinking Orphanages suggests several policy reforms that could help to revive children’s homes. Among them: broadly liberalize state licensure statutes and regulations, giving providers greater authority to make their own staff and program decisions; eliminate statutes and regulations that discourage the use of volunteers and resident labor that could reduce operating costs; convert government child-welfare funds to block grants, allowing states greater flexibility in placing children into permanent adoptive or children’s homes rather than in temporary foster care.

McKenzie and other contributors also propose reforms to reduce the amount of time children spend in foster care and to make placement in permanent care settings more common. Two are noteworthy: assign the police and the criminal justice system, rather than social workers, to conduct the initial investigation of cases of significant abuse and neglect (eliminating a conflict of interest in the current child welfare system that usually investigates and also apportions funds for cases of abuse and neglect); and place a time limit, preferably 12 months, on abusive and negligent parents to rehabilitate themselves. If children cannot be safely returned to their parents after one year, those parents should forfeit any right to regain custody of their children.

Rethinking Orphanages is a worthwhile attempt to re-evaluate a private institution that has almost disappeared from the American landscape. It is an outstanding collection of well-argued essays that should rekindle interest in a viable private alternative to government bureaucracy that could greatly benefit tens of thousands of needy children.

Daniel T. Oliver is a research associate at the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Research Center and a freelance writer.

What do the following things have in common? The child-care initiative, foster care, Head Start, and the child-abuse prevention effort “Healthy Families.” All are programs for children and all receive government funding, most at the federal level. They also share an insidious assumption: most people, particularly the poor, are unable to be good parents without the help of professionals.^[1] Is such an assumption warranted? And if not, why not?

Parents increasingly complain about how difficult it is to raise their children in a wholesome atmosphere. In The Assault on Parenthood, Dana Mack tapped into that sense of frustration. Parents, she says, find that the “communal supports for the child-rearing work of even the best families are crumbling. . . . In fact, parents see the decline of social supports and the breakdown of families as symptoms of a larger phenomenon: the sudden and rapid decay of those stable social values that once fostered a protective culture of childhood.”^[2]

Recognizing the need for community support does not necessitate turning over parenting to a professional class, particularly one subsidized by the state. But the two things are not unconnected. As anyone could tell who monitored last year’s debate over child care, the White House conference on early childhood development, or the latest proposal to triple funding to schools that make after-school programs available, the Clinton administration is more than willing for government to step in to “help” parents.

Caution Warranted

Americans should exercise caution before embracing such assistance. One has only to look at the results of the government “help” extended to the poor over the last several decades. Since the war on poverty began in the sixties, an unintended consequence of government policy has been to treat the poor as if they were incapable of living responsibly, particularly when it comes to raising their children. This shows up most clearly in education and child-welfare policy.

The easy answer over the years has been to spend more money on government programs. If we are feeling guilty about the plight of the urban poor, then increased funding for Head Start (the preschool program for poor children that is supposed to help them enter grade school on a par with their more affluent peers) is the easy solution. Increased spending requires only our money, not our time or effort. Simply spending more money also has the added advantage of appearing nonjudgmental. We don’t have to say that children do better with both a mother and a father or that neglectful parents are bad. Instead, we ignore the underlying problem, hoping that more education will inoculate children against their upbringing. In practice, this has meant turning the problem over to professionals.

Only occasionally do we get hints that professionalized child rearing might be problematic. Only occasionally is anything made of the fact that Head Start, now in its fourth decade, might be little more than a salve for our consciences. A recent GAO study confirms what earlier research has consistently pointed out, i.e., there is scant evidence that Head Start has any long-term beneficial effects for children.^[3] Yet the program now routinely recruits three-year-olds. There is also a “0 to 3 initiative,” because age three was deemed too late for a sufficient head start. This initiative, as its name implies, works intensively with young mothers, teaching them about child development and encouraging them to rear their children responsibly. Yet as the program grows more expansive, there is little indication that children fare any better and some signs that they do not. (See John Hood’s article, page 11.)

The Comprehensive Child Development Program, a similar federally funded initiative geared toward low-income families, released its evaluation results last year with little fanfare because the study revealed that participating families fared no better than their less pampered peers and sometimes even did worse. At some time we have to admit that there are limits to what professionals can do. By failing to insist on responsible parents, we ask educators to take on an extra burden and are shocked when they fail.

In many respects, education policy has been driven by the disasters plaguing the child-welfare system. Just a glance at recent statistics tells us that something is dreadfully awry. Child protective agencies looked into the lives of over three million children in 1996 (the latest year for which we have data).^[4] This number reflects more than a 300 percent increase in reports over the last 20 years.^[5] In under one-third (28 percent) of the cases, a caseworker determined that a child had been hurt by his parents; of that number, 15 percent were considered to be in sufficient danger to be removed from their homes and put into foster care.^[6] While no official count exists, experts estimate that there are at least 500,000 children in foster care today.^[7] Unfortunately, over 30 percent of all children sent back home to their families eventually re-enter foster care because of further abuse or neglect.^[8]

But who are these children and why don’t we hear about them? The children caught in the web of the child welfare system are overwhelmingly poor and without fathers.^[9] Most Americans are horrified when confronted with these statistics, but are unaware that they are predictably the direct result of policies that do not hold parents accountable for their behavior. Not surprisingly, the children of those irresponsible parents are the ones who end up in Head Start.

Perverse Incentives

The pervading problem is that the child-welfare system is riddled with perverse incentives that undermine personal responsibility and reward destructive behavior. Social workers understand themselves as providing remedies in the guise of therapeutic treatment. Child abuse is not regarded primarily as a violation of justice, but as either a symptom of illness or the result of economic deprivation, depending on which theoretical model of abuse the social worker follows: the medical or ecological model. Parents, according to either theory, are not at fault. Because abuse is not seen as a moral problem, it should be susceptible to professional help. It is therefore not surprising to find reluctance to ever pronounce any given parent irredeemable.

Mirroring the science of modern medicine, child-welfare professionals are trained to look at human behavior as a doctor would look at disease. Just as doctors strive to eradicate cancer, child-welfare professionals work to end all strife within the family. Even the tools of their trade are couched in scientific terms. If someone beats a child, he is in need of treatment, even if treatment is a parenting class. Caseworkers use “risk assessment tools” to decide whether a child can safely remain in the home, as if by application of a checklist one could do more than guess who will choose to do evil. Such tools lessen the dignity of all involved: they fail to take into account, and in fact attempt to replace, the free will of the parent and the judgment of the caseworker.

The profession continuously speaks of creating “systems of care” to protect children from the harm caused by bad parents, thus attempting to restore the broken family through social engineering. If a system fails, one needs simply to tinker with the machine, not find fault with the human beings involved. Finding fault is made more difficult because any agency intervention is cloaked under the secrecy of confidentiality laws and treated as utterly private. Since child-welfare agencies are lodged within the state, however, their actions cannot be private: citizens do not have a choice about when the agency enters into their lives.

That cases of abuse and neglect are subject to intervention is not a problem in and of itself; rather, it is the manner in which such intervention is carried out. Child welfare professionals were long ago successful in persuading state legislatures to decriminalize most cases of child abuse and neglect. By forsaking the courts of criminal law, in which determinations of justice and injustice are made and punishments meted out, social work took on the much larger task of attempting to heal family members who have gone wrong. The therapeutic regimen is carried out by providing various services from things as simple as housekeeping to as complicated as residential drug treatment for both the drug-addicted mother and her children.

Healthy Families America, embraced by politicians across the spectrum, is only the latest government-funded fad directed at preventing child abuse. Healthy Families, sponsored by the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and funded by most states, is popular because it is advertised as voluntary. This home-visiting program screens parents with newborns in the hospital for risk factors for abuse; then paraprofessionals visit parents deemed to be high-risk and provide them with advice and information on child development. Its effectiveness is unclear: in Arizona, for example, the first-time mothers in the control group had a lower incidence of abuse than the group in the program.^[10] After several decades of social experimentation, one thing is clear: yet another government program will fail to make parents better; we do know it can make things worse, however.

It is the poor and marginalized citizens who are hurt most by current policy. If we want parents to raise their children in a manner fitting to a free society, we must remove the incentives for irresponsibility. Overcoming desperate circumstances requires good character, especially that virtue which is the foundation of all the other virtues: self-control. When virtue is not rewarded, but is instead treated as one of many equally worthy lifestyle choices, the poor are disproportionately harmed. It is more than time to insist that all parents be responsible for raising their children.

Notes

1. This may indeed be true of foster care, where the state steps in and physically removes a child from a dangerous parent.
2. Dana Mack, The Assault on Parenthood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 17.
3. U.S. General Accounting Office, “Head Start: Research Provides Little Information on Impact of Current Program,” April 1997. See also Nina H. Shokraii and Patrick F. Fagan, “After 33 Years and $30 Billion, Time to Find Out If Head Start Produces Results” (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation), July 15, 1998.
4. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, Child Maltreatment 1996: Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998), p. 2–1.
5. Patricia A. Schene, “Past, Present, and Future Roles of Child Protective Services,” in The Future of Children, Spring 1998 (Los Altos, Calif.: The Center for the Future of Children, David and Lucile Packard Foundation), p. 29.
6. Child Maltreatment 1996, p. 2–3.
7. The Voluntary Cooperative Information System (VCIS) is the most complete aggregate data on children in substitute care. It is collected by the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), formerly known as American Public Welfare Association, in Washington, D.C. The last estimate available is for 1995, which puts the number of children in foster care at 483,000. However, APHSA projects a 3–4 percent increase each year, which would put the estimate at 527,787 for 1998. See American Public Human Services Association’s Web site at: http//:www.apwa.org/faq/quest7.html.
8. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, National Study of Protective, Preventive and Reunification Services Delivered to Children and Their Families (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), p. 3–11.
9. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Executive Summary of the Third National Incidence Study on Child Abuse and Neglect (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), pp. 8–10.
10. Robert Franciosi, “Get ‘Em While They’re Young: The Second Childcare Revolution and the Expansion of the Nanny State” (Phoenix: Goldwater Institute, 1998), p. 20.

According to statistics, there were 442,000 children in foster care in the United States in 1992, nearly 50 percent more than in 1985. Critics argue that this system is grossly unfair to children, keeping them bound for years in a legal limbo where parental rights are neither terminated nor relinquished, and where social workers have disincentives to move children out of foster care. Despite the criticisms leveled at the current foster-care system, when Newt Gingrich suggested that some children might be better cared for in orphanages his idea was decried as a draconian throwback to a crueler time. Was it really?

In The Home, economist Richard McKenzie argues from personal experience that orphanages aren’t such bad places after all. This coming-of-age memoir chronicles McKenzie’s eight years during the 1950s in a North Carolina Presbyterian orphanage. Although not designed as a public-policy piece, the book nonetheless has a strong public-policy message. For some children, life in a well-run institution may be preferable to foster care or life in a dysfunctional, abusive family. The great virtue of The Home is that by telling his own story, and those of fellow orphans at The Home, McKenzie makes a compelling case for the institutional care of some children.

McKenzie’s saddest story is of how he got to The Home. Like most other children at the orphanage he was not a full orphan—he did have one living parent, his father. But his father drank heavily and had no steady job. After McKenzie’s mother committed suicide in 1952, his maternal aunts fought his father for legal control of him and his older brother. The aunts won the battle but decided they couldn’t care for the young boys (then 10 and 12), and so sent them to The Home, where they joined some 200 other children.

Is McKenzie sorry that his aunts made this decision? The answer is an unequivocal no. Indeed, McKenzie attributes much of his later success in life to his experiences at The Home. (He is an accomplished economist who holds a chaired professorship at the University of California, Irvine.) Far from bemoaning his life as a poor orphan, McKenzie argues that The Home was probably the best thing that could have happened to him—given the alternatives.

McKenzie credits The Home with giving him the bounds that he needed, instilling in him discipline and a desire to succeed, and providing support to start down that road to success. (The Home, for example, paid for his undergraduate education.) Of course, The Home was not perfect. McKenzie concedes that it could not provide him with the kind of emotional support offered by a loving family: “[i]f there is one thing we missed at The Home, it was having access to the type of person our mothers could have been.” But in his eyes, it was vastly better than life with his father or life on the streets.

Over and over again McKenzie asks readers to consider how children of broken and abusive homes are best cared for. Is a child’s experience in the current system really better than life at The Home? Throughout his account, McKenzie is careful to remind his readers that for children in situations like his, life was necessarily a choice between imperfect alternatives. There was no fairy godmother waiting to carry McKenzie and his brother off to a perfect family. Instead, the choice was between a dysfunctional family and institutionalized care. McKenzie convincingly argues that for him and for many of his peers at The Home, the orphanage offered more and better possibilities for a satisfying future than did relatives or foster care.

To his credit, McKenzie does not sugarcoat life at The Home. His days were full of hard work in fields, milking cows, working in orchards, doing school work, playing sports, and going to church. He had little free time and little in the way of material comforts: no shoes in the summer, too few blankets in the winter. When the children’s workload increased one fall, McKenzie was forced to sell his favorite pet goat, a combination friend and confidante. Some of the employees at The Home were racist, and some were downright insensitive to the children. But others were wonderful people who became role models for McKenzie and his friends.

McKenzie wants his readers to understand why an orphanage can be a refuge and a source of inspiration and why the overwhelming majority of those who spent their childhoods there can look back on them with fondness and gratitude. At the end of the book readers do understand just that.

This makes the final episode of McKenzie’s book all the more discouraging. He returned to The Home in 1994 for an annual homecoming. No longer a residential orphanage, The Home now caters to severely troubled children who stay for weeks, not years. The annual cost of caring for each child now averages over $45,000, compared with less than $3,000 (in 1995 dollars) while he was in residence. The staff-to-student ratio today is 1.5 to one. The students no longer work in the fields, or do other chores, because as one administrator said, we can’t afford to pay them. Are these children better off than McKenzie and his fellow students?

It is impossible to separate the story of McKenzie’s personal triumph over adversity from the story of The Home’s role as a refuge and a source of inspiration. This book demonstrates that positive alternatives to the current child-welfare system do exist. How sad that a place that did so much good for so many people was ruined by social theorists. However, it is a blessing that Richard McKenzie has reopened the dialogue about orphanages and children. Let us hope that his positive message will influence the crafting of today’s child-welfare policy.