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"Thrownaway" Children and Thrownaway Parenthood

NCJ Number
165430
Journal
Temple Law Review Volume: 68 Issue: 4 Dated: (1995) Pages: 1715-1762
Author(s)
G A Loken
Date Published
1995
Length
48 pages
Annotation
This paper develops the argument that the problem of "thrownaway" children is an increasing and major challenge to our notions and practices of family justice; recommendations are offered for addressing this problem.
Abstract
The most important empirical study on this issue is the National Incidence Study: Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children in America (NISMART), which Congress mandated to help resolve questions regarding the number of "missing" children. Based on a carefully conducted national telephone survey of 34,822 households, NISMART found that approximately 127,000 children under age 18 became "thrownaways" during 1988 through abandonment or exile by their parents. Of those children, some 59,000 were considered by the authors to be "policy focal," i.e., after expulsion from their homes they had no "familiar and secure place to stay while away." Careful assessment of the results of NISMART alongside other recent demographic data suggests that the abandonment of exile of a child is shockingly common in the United States. Not only does exile of a child from the parents' home create grave risks of major harm to the child, it undermines one of the key premises of the liberal state, i.e., that parents will care for their young. It is in the best interest of children, families, and the state that "throwaway" events be both discouraged in advance and addressed after the fact by careful legal reforms that give recognition to the informal community resources that adolescents at risk depend on most. Much of the problem could be alleviated by expanding transitional living services for thrownaways, by providing them ready access to the foster care system, by discouraging parental abdication through enforcement of civil and criminal penalties for abandonment and nonsupport; and by providing financial relief to families with adolescents at home. 261 footnotes