The Aladdin Factor: Why Troubled Kids Fare Better Than Foster Kids
Along with reading lots of books on homelessness, I’ve also read some doctoral dissertations. Most make boring reading, but a 2012 University of Texas dissertation by Rebecca Jean Gomez challenged some standard understandings regarding foster care and homelessness. The thesis title: “Understanding Emerging Adulthood from the Perspective of Those Transitioning from Foster Care and Those Experiencing Homelessness.”
Gomez, who made several stops after gaining her Ph.D., returned to UT last year as Associate Dean of the School of Social Work. Her dissertation examined two sets of people experiencing homelessness: those who had “aged out” of foster care — typically at age 18 — and those from troubled homes who had not been in the foster care system. Unsurprisingly, most had grown up in poverty. The average age in both groups was 20, but one big difference distinguished them.
Lopez does not offer a catchy name for the distinction (dissertations are not known for snappy phrases), but I’d call it the Aladdin factor. Aladdin, you may remember from the Disney movie, calls himself a “street rat” and knows how to survive amid homelessness. He is competent. He has “agency,” the belief that he can act to improve his circumstances.
That mindset is different from what former foster child Rob Henderson describes in his good memoir, Troubled. He says foster kids become used to arbitrary movement from home to home regardless of behavior, whether good or bad. Gomez’s research parallels Henderson’s impression — and when children come to believe they have no control of their futures, motivation to study or work hard evaporates.
It’s not that the child welfare system causes trouble in what would otherwise be paradise. As Gomez reports, research shows that “young adults who have experienced abuse, substitute care placement, parental substance abuse, or housing instability as children are at increased risk for homelessness regardless of their experience.” But today’s standard “policies and programs designed to support these youth . . . actually decrease competence.”
Children in foster care move often — studies have shown seven or eight placements to be typical — and often suffer physical or sexual abuse. So do children outside of the child welfare system: Gomez says, “the difference between the two groups (homeless, and homeless who aged out of foster care) may be in the coping skills they learn.” Foster care, she notes, “encourages dependency whereas the general population of homeless emerging adults arrive at the homeless experience through an environment that fosters self-reliance.”
Gomez found that financial support from governments does not make up for a lack of emotional support, nor does a physical home remove “psychological homelessness.” Her dissertation criticizes “the assumption that supplementing the environment of these emerging adults by providing additional resources (i.e., money management, life skills training, educational and training vouchers) will lead to improved competency.”
Gomez in her dissertation quotes what she calls the “learned helplessness” evident in foster kid comments such as “They lock you up so much that when you get out you don’t know how to function in the real world. I don’t know how to drive because no one would show me.” She compared that with statements by those who figured out how to survive: “I am not nervous about being on my own because I am used to the fact that I am on my own.”
In short, we don’t wish on children “challenges such as homelessness as a child, maneuvering public welfare systems, living in shelters, riding public transportation, and identifying unsafe situations.” Nevertheless, Gomez writes that “these experiences give the child gradual exposure to the difficulties inherent in poverty and homelessness. This environment may teach the child how to survive in this reality.”
Gomez wrote a good dissertation, so I’ll let her summarize it herself:
“The differences in both learned helplessness and self-reliance in the data were striking both in terms of number and in terms of the depth and quality of the quotations. Those in foster care were emotive and shared detailed examples of how they felt helpless and dependent. Emerging adults who aged out of foster care overwhelmingly reported feeling their actions did not have the capacity to influence outcomes, that they were unprepared for adulthood, that they were at the mercy of other people to take care of their needs, and that their success was dependent on the actions of others.”
It’s bad when children grow up without a sense of agency, the belief that their actions make a difference. Gomez concluded that young people who were homeless but had not grown up in foster care often saw themselves as “capable . . . and prepared to take care of themselves.” They had agency.