As I found myself back in my hometown this weekend, we had some minor problems. My *new* tires from Walmart were in dangerous shape, something I hadn't bothered to check before leaving home (separate blog; I'll hit that later). So I found myself needing to replace not one, but two tires, and not having the money to have WalMart replace them both (we eventually had to replace one and risk it with the other). Because few stores are open in that area on Sunday, I needed to find someone who could tell me where to get good used tires. My dad was out of the question; if I showed up at his door, he'd question my motives and accuse me of spying on him for my mom. So I left that bridge burned and headed on to the foster farm where I had lived for two years, knowing that one of the good skills my former foster father DOES possess is knowing where to acquire junk cheaply.

For those unfamiliar with the term, "foster farm" is a term I use to refer to professional foster homes manned by foster parents who take in as many kids as the state will allow and raise them in squalid conditions because they have no other significant source of income.

As I pulled up to the trailer home where these people lived, I saw that little had changed. My former foster mother was walking up the ramp to their front door, followed by a developmentally disabled young lady that was obviously one of her latest wards. As I entered the home, the distinctive smell of rotted food and poorly tended to pets greeted my nose, conditions that would NEVER be acceptable in the home of a biological parent, but are somehow fine with case workers for foster parents willing to take in the children they deem to be hard to place (I was hard to place because I was 16 at the time of my last placement, when I went to live with these people). The house was beyond cluttered, it was filthy, and the fact that my former foster mother was oblivious to it made it clear that this was a perpetual condition.

Yet there are those who would argue that we have no business offering any oversight of these families, that their mere willingness to take in these children means we must accept that these children can be warehoused in homes where the monthly stipend check from the government outweighs the physical, mental, and emotional well being of these children. In reflecting back, although I take full ownership for the actions that led to my criminal activity at the age of 18, I cannot help but think that the desperation, anger, and frustration culminating from having spent half my life to that point in such an unfeeling environment where I was little more than a commodity for the profit of these people may have been a significant contributing factor in my behaviour. After all, once I was released from that life of crime, I didn't go back to it. In fact, I wonder how many of our nation's incarcerated have aged out in similarly desperate conditions. Welfare homes are little different in that regard; children there represent a check as well.

I find it wholly ironic that we claim we love our children. We kill so many before they even get a chance to draw breath, and we treat those that survive as chattle, auctioning them off in custody disputes and trading them for cash in our various social programs. If we truly LOVED our children, their personal feelings would somehow weigh in in the matter.