Investigating Families - by Kelley Fong (Hardcover)

About the Book

"For many parents, a knock on the door from a state agency with the power to take their children is their worst fear. This experience is widespread and concentrated overwhelmingly in poor communities and communities of color. One in three children nationwide-and over half of Black children-come into contact with Child Protective Services during childhood. This book draws on in-depth fieldwork to examine the U.S. child welfare system, providing a window into the inner workings of CPS and the lives of mothers drawn into its orbit. Kelley Fong draws on extensive, multi-perspective qualitative data across two states, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Child Protective Services investigations have largely eluded ethnographic observation, but Fong had the opportunity to observe investigative visits and interview assigned investigators as well as mothers involved in these cases. She also reviewed case records, conducted follow-up interviews, and attended staff meetings and trainings for investigators. In examining the data, Fong demonstrates how CPS reports are socially produced, and in a context of austerity and structural racism, how CPS reporting becomes a solution to the dilemmas and constraints faced by frontline educational, medical, law enforcement, and other professionals, offering an outlet for their rehabilitative aspirations and a way to compensate for their limitations. Challenging Motherhood argues that CPS reports reframe adverse experiences often rooted in trauma and marginality-such as domestic violence, substance use, and homelessness-as child mistreatment. Ideologies and inequities of race, class, and gender place poor mothers of color in particular under CPS investigation"--

Book Synopsis

How our reliance on Child Protective Services makes motherhood precarious for those already marginalized

It's the knock on the door that many mothers fear: a visit from Child Protective Services (CPS), the state agency with the power to take their children away. Over the last half-century, these encounters have become an all-too-common way of trying to address family poverty and adversity. One in three children nationwide--and half of Black children--now encounter CPS during childhood.

In Investigating Families, Kelley Fong provides an unprecedented look at the inner workings of CPS and the experiences of families pulled into its orbit. Drawing on firsthand observations of CPS investigations and hundreds of interviews with those involved, Fong traces the implications of invoking CPS as a "first responder" to family misfortune and hardship. She shows how relying on CPS--an entity fundamentally oriented around parental wrongdoing and empowered to separate families--organizes the response to adversity around surveilling, assessing, and correcting marginalized mothers. The agency's far-reaching investigative apparatus undermines mothers' sense of security and shapes how they marshal resources for their families, reinforcing existing inequalities. And even before CPS comes knocking, mothers feel vulnerable to a system that jeopardizes their parenthood. Countering the usual narratives of punitive villains and hapless victims, Fong's unique, behind-the-scenes account tells a revealing story of how we try to protect children by threatening mothers--and points the way to a more productive path for families facing adversity.

Review Quotes

"Finalist for the Media for a Just Society Awards, Evident Change"

"Honorable Mention for the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Distinguished Book Award, Crime, Law, and Deviance section of the American Sociological Association"

"Winner of the Herbert Jacob Prize, Law and Society Association"

"Winner of the Outstanding Book Award, Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section of the American Sociological Association"

"Winner of the William J. Goode Book Award, Family Section of the American Sociological Association"

"Investigating Families...crucially illuminates the perspectives of women tangled in the [child protective services] web. Fong is a sociologist, and Investigating Families is based on rare firsthand access to CPS investigations and in depth interviews with dozens of impacted mothers --the kind of mothers upper-middle-class readers don't typically find relatable .... We would do well to examine why we continue to ignore the horror that is unfolding for millions of families in America each year."---Kristen Martin, New York Review of Books

About the Author

Kelley Fong is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.