Through careful ethnography and rich in-depth interviews at a non-profit foster family agency, this book takes a look behind the scenes of our troubled foster care system.

Through careful ethnography and rich in-depth interviews at a non-profit foster family agency, Parenting for the State looks behind the scenes of the troubled US foster care system, and the motivations, struggles and frustrations of the social workers and foster parents who spend their days caring for vulnerable children. child advocates as a national travesty, Teresa Toguchi Swartz delves deep to understand why the number of children under state protection has grown over the past two decades, and why the foster care system has been charged with overzealously removing children from their families and placing them in unstable, insecure and unsafe environments which put them at greater risk for homelessness, imprisonment and state dependency in later life. and the foster parents, Teresa Toguchi Swartz uncovers what contributes to these disheartening outcomes for children and discusses the problems of the system, and the competing cultural rationales and complex bureaucratic environment that set the context under which care is administered. women's studies, as well as sociologists and child welfare advocates will find this an invaluable addition to their studies