Chronicles of Liminality | Los Angeles Review of Books

A BABY SCREAMS as it tries to free itself from the makeshift restraints its mother has cobbled together out of a belt and a chair. She is in the next room, trying to get a better high. Over the next twelve years, this turmoil only intensifies as it is placed into California’s broken foster care system.

This is the journey that Rob Henderson takes in his harrowing Troubled: Memories of care, family and social class (2024), a book that turns out to be more than a chronicle of pain and comes to some surprising—and, for some political advocates, unwelcome—conclusions. First, I should mention an unavoidable personal reference point: I grew up with abusive parents. After my mother died when I was 15, I was placed in California’s foster care system with no guidance or permanent family. In a group home, I saw how astonishingly indifferent school officials and bureaucrats were to children forced into a system that often left them worse off. I was a few years older than the rest and had positive (if fictional) role models who steered me away from drug addiction and showed me the way to college. But the odds were against that outcome.

Henderson arrived there younger than me and had a somewhat different experience in several foster homes – households run by “parents” who accept government subsidies to care for children who have often endured unimaginable horrors, with all the psychological setbacks that entails. He admits that he doesn’t remember much about at least four artificial families he was thrown into. Whether this relapse was due to trauma or lack of awareness, he never says for sure. His mother had been gone for a long time, arrested for neglect and then deported to South Korea.

Henderson drank, smoked, and played dangerous games that required him to gag in order to feel alive. But his main emotional outlet during this period was, perhaps not surprisingly, fighting. In one such episode, a larger classmate named Edgar provokes Henderson. The boys hit each other, put each other in headlocks, and attack below the belt. After this brawl, Edgar helps Henderson back on his feet. “After the fights, friendships were formed that lasted,” he writes.

Then something like a miracle happens: A family in Red Bluff, California, officially adopts Henderson and he takes their last name. But the period of stability only lasts until his adoptive mother files for divorce and his adoptive father disappears. Thus arises the eternal problem that haunts Henderson’s life: abandonment.

Throughout the memoir, we meet various adult characters: his mother, the Martínezes, social worker Gerri, the Hendersons, and other parental figures. Each of them abandons him when he needs them most. This leads Henderson down a dark path of emotional instability and recurrent substance abuse until he barely graduates from high school. The stability he craves does not come until he is old enough to enlist in the Air Force. After his discharge and a stint in rehab, he is accepted into Yale University.

There, however, he is confused by the attitudes of his fellow students, who seem unaware of their superficial beliefs. He finds their support for non-traditional families and the legalization of drugs particularly disturbing. He calls these attitudes “luxury beliefs” – the cognitive ability to advocate for policies that sound fair, just and liberating, but inadvertently cause problems for the most vulnerable.

Not everyone will appreciate this essentially conservative message. But this book is compelling. Henderson offers a clear view of the foster care system and the problems it fails to solve. His narrative credibility gives him an unassailable critique of liberal solutions that he believes only lead to a permanent underclass. “So it seems that the wealthy secure their positions by ensuring that only those who go to the right colleges, listen to the right podcasts, and read the right books and articles can join their inner circle,” he writes.

The book’s central argument is that society should pay more attention to family stability than academic standards. The latter is related to the former. In environments that offered him safety and security – such as his early years with the Hendersons – he was able to improve his grades and was placed in an accelerated curriculum. However, when the family fell apart, his grades declined rapidly and he became prone to violent outbursts.

While I agree with Henderson’s statement that most discussions surrounding foster care are superficial, I wish he had used his own experiences to offer solutions for people in similar situations. I believe one of the more powerful approaches is to encourage individual and family therapy before trauma even occurs. Therapy is often stigmatized, which can lead people to hide their emotional needs, as I did as a child. If those needs aren’t addressed, they can grow and turn into harmful behavior. While there is somewhat more access to treatment today, Henderson didn’t seem to have that opportunity. If Henderson had had better access to intensive treatment earlier, he might have been able to break down the mental barriers that blocked him on his path to self-discovery. And if his parents had had access to therapy, Henderson likely could have avoided much of his trauma. However, self-help alone isn’t enough.

To his credit, Henderson is more open about his past than most foster children. I often avoid sharing details of my own experiences for fear that people will see me differently. The public is unaware of the foster care system, and while social workers are supposed to warn against poor treatment, Henderson shows that they are not doing their job.

Regardless of whether readers agree with his political messages, Henderson’s story of self-discovery, growth and resilience is a valuable contribution to the discussion about how our society must deal with the perennial problem of separating children from their parents – a topic that is shrouded in darkness.