According to the U. S. Census Bureau, an average of 306,000 Americans received foster care benefits each month in 1998, resulting in a total of $7,033,000,000 (more than seven billion dollars) in federal, state, and local expenditures.

(Source: Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, "Cash and Noncash Benefits for Persons with Limited Income: Eligibility Rules, Recipient, and Expenditure Data, FY1996-FY1998", CRS Report RL30401; December 15, 1999; in U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2001 [121st edition], Washington, DC, 2001, p. 344.)

"'The argument must be made,' he writes, 'frequently and with great passion-that society needs a critical mass of married two-parent families, both to raise their own children well and to serve as models for children growing up in alternative family structures.  Tragically, we are in great danger today of losing that critical mass; in some communities it has already been lost.'"

(Source: Wade Horn, in The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action, David Blankenhorn, Wade Horn, and Mitchell B. Pearlstein, eds., 1999; in Beth Henary, "Mother and Father Know Best," The Weekly Standard, vol. 7, no. 24 [March 4, 2002], p. 18.)

In recent decades, social workers have placed an unprecedented number of children in foster care-typically because of allegations that their single mother is abusing them, or is using drugs.  Lamentably, foster care does not instill in these children the kind of self-control and discipline they will need to make successful marriage and homes in their adult lives.  Rather, it is sexual license which characterizes the post-foster-care lives of adolescents recently studied by a team of investigators from the University of Colorado Health Services Center.

After studying data from 9620 women ages 15 to 44 collected as part of the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, the Colorado scholars conclude that "a history of living in either foster or [state-arranged] kinship care is a marker for high-risk sexual behaviors."  More specifically, the researchers find that "a history of living in foster or kinship care was associated with a greater likelihood of being sexually active" (p < .01) and that women with a history of foster care were twice as likely without such as history to report having had more than the median number of sexual partners (Odds Ratio of 2.0). 

While foster care or state-arranged kinship care may be necessary in some hard cases, only the naïve will see such care as a good substitute for a successful intact family as a teacher of moral commitment.

(Source:  Sara C. Carpenter et al., "The Association of Foster Care or Kinship Care With Adolescent Sexual Behavior and First Pregnancy," Pediatrics 2001; 108(3).  URL: http://www/pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/108/3/e46)