In 2018, following an uptick in the separation of migrant families at the US-Mexico border, “Families Belong Together” became a rallying cry denouncing the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy toward families fleeing war-like levels of violence worsened by economic instability. Under this policy, migrant parents are brought into federal custody, awaiting prosecution, while children are detained separately until they can be relocated into foster care or, if applicable, sent to live with relatives who were able to settle in the States. A great deal of ink was and continues to be spilled mulling over the emotional and cognitive effects familial separation can have not just on young children but on their parents, as well, and for good reason. One Honduran man, so distraught from the experience of having his child taken from him by US border patrol officials, ended up taking his own life in his detention cell. The practice of separating families has been one of the more widely and heavily reprehended practices of the Trump administration by journalists, politicians, and activists on social media.

In early November, Jenna Baxter changed her profile picture in early November to include a Facebook “frame” (a digital effect Facebook users can apply to their photos to promote causes important to them) over a photo of her, the words “#FAMILIESBELONGTOGETHER” plastered on in bright orange font, an illustrated image of a child’s hand holding an adult’s in the lower-left corner. But Jenna is calling for a different kind of family reunification more relevant to Newark, Ohio in Licking County where she lives, than what’s going on at the border. For about a year now, she and her partner, Matthew have been without custody of their seven-year-old son.

I first met Jenna and Matthew at The Main Place, a mental health and addiction recovery center in downtown Newark. The Main Place offers a wide variety of services including case management, re-housing efforts, and peer support for those struggling with mental illness and addiction. It also operates as somewhat of a drop-in center for the city’s homeless, providing home-cooked meals, shelter from the bitterly cold winters and thick, humid summers, or just a place to play cards with friends. Jenna and Matthew, however, are here on a mission: the two are meeting regularly with a case manager in order to get re-housed together and subsequently, be reunited with their little boy. I was instantly captivated by the couple, watching them kiss, hug, hold hands with one another at a table by one of the windows, light seeping through lavender shades printed with words of encouragement: “Live Your Dream”. 

The two met each other years ago in twelve-step recovery for methamphetamine. They settled down, renting a place in Newark and have been together ever since. They are eager to share what makes their story together so special, one worth celebrating: Jenna getting pregnant seven years ago and bringing into the world a healthy baby boy bearing his father’s name, nicknamed Matty. 

“Things were good,” Jenna tells me, “We were a total family.”

Until they weren’t. 

“We’re hit in the mouth. We can’t get ahead.”

The family ran into trouble when their landlord suddenly decided to sell the property, leaving them scrambling to find another option. 

“We weren’t evicted because we didn’t pay rent. We didn’t wreck the house. The owner just decided to sell it,” Jenna tells me. 

This situation was further complicated by the fact that Matthew also has older children from previous relationships who live with their mother. In trying to save up money so he, Jenna, and their son could find a new place, he had fallen behind on child support payments. 

“That’s how easy to become homeless it is,” Jenna states matter-of-factly,“Your home gets ripped out from under you and you miss a few bills.”

It wasn’t long after losing their home that Matthew was sent to jail for a little over two weeks as punishment for failure to make child support in a timely manner. 

“We’re hit in the mouth. We can’t get ahead. Every time we do get ahead, something happens,” Jenna says.   

Data reported by the Licking County Coalition for Housing seems to agree- the coalition reports that the average household in Licking County is just two missed paychecks away from becoming homeless. That’s a frightening statistic, but not entirely shocking for Newark where 20% of the population lives below the poverty line- a considerably higher rate than the Ohio average (14%) as well as the average nationally (12.3%). In January of 2019, the Licking County Housing Initiatives reported 153 unsheltered individuals and 45 unsheltered, but the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that number to be 2.5-3 times greater in actuality. Of Licking County’s homeless, 40% are children. 

“We’re still his parents.”

Becoming homeless does not automatically make a parent or parents ineligible to maintain custody of their children. It does bring the parents’ ability to basically provide and support their children under closer scrutiny. Homeless parents often decide on their own accord that they do not want an environment as high-stress and low-resource as being homeless to be the one in which they raise their children. This was the case of Jenna and Matthew who made the difficult decision to relinquish custody of their son, feeling that their circumstances rendered them unable to provide and care for Matty the way they felt he deserved. Nothing about their situation brings the word “lucky” to mind, but compared to many other parents in similar situations, Jenna and Matthew are fortunate. Matty lives with one of Jenna’s older daughters, Emma, who works a steady job and is happily settled down with her partner, Vanessa. The three of them live in Pickerington, a suburb of Columbus about forty-five minutes from Newark. Technically, Matty is living in “kinship care” which differs from foster care. Kinship care requires less bureaucratic hoop-jumping, provides more open lines of communication between the parents and their child, and is less traumatic for all parties relative to a traditional foster care arrangement. All of which aids in the goal of eventual reunification- what Matthew and Jenna are working toward, slowly but surely.  

“We have parental rights,” Matthew tells me, fervently, pointing at my notepad as I write. “We may not have custody, but we’re still his parents. We have those rights and we get a say.” 

I understand his diligence in pointing this out to me. It’s an important distinction- while they may have surrendered custody of their son, the couple maintains legal status as his true parents. Parents who either relinquish or have stripped from them their parental rights lose any possibility of further consideration of custody. Even visits aren’t guaranteed the legal guardian thinks it’s a good idea. When the two are able to find permanent housing, they will be able to renegotiate the custody agreement and reunite their family, returning to everything they had before they lost everything.

“We have visitation. We see him as often as they let us,” Matthew explains. 

“That’s right,” says Jenna “As long as we stay clean, we get to see him. We stay clean, we get a place, and we’ll get him back.” 

“You blink and it’s there.”

The aspect of sobriety has been, at times, an uphill battle. Methamphetamine and even alcohol were things Matthew and Jenna, by and large, left behind them when they got together. However, the stress of losing her family’s home, custody of her son, and Matthew being sent to jail made Jenna feel she was losing control over her life, and at breakneck speed. She went back to using.

“That’s the only time I was using, was when he was in jail,” she says. 

It certainly doesn’t help that, as many people in Newark will tell you, methamphetamine is more than easily available. Licking County has heavily funneled resources into combatting the crisis of opioid-related overdoses, and with good reason: of the forty-two overdose deaths in Licking County in 2018, twenty-six listed heroin, fentanyl, or other opioids causing the overdose. However, methamphetamine was not far behind, with thirteen mentions. In the Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring Network’s Drug Trend Report from June 2018-January 2019, methamphetamine and fentanyl were both rated a “10” by the vast majority of survey respondents on an availability scale- “0” translating to “not available, impossible to get” and “10” meaning “widely available, extremely easy to get” in the Columbus region. The average cost of a half a gram of fentanyl can range anywhere from $35-65, whereas a full gram of methamphetamine runs for about the same amount, $40-60. Of course, the effects of the two drugs are vastly different, but in Newark, the low price is what drives meth’s appeal. Talking with Jenna and others leads me to believe the public health fixation on opioids is possibly misguided, with meth existing as a much bigger problem. 

“Oh, it’s everywhere. Everywhere. I mean seriously, you blink and it’s there. Dealers keep coming in from Columbus, bringing it in, and I’m like ‘I don’t know what you’re coming here for, there’s no money in this town’,” Jenna says, laughing and shaking a thin strand of blond hair away from her eyes, green and always kohl-lined. 

She echoes a notion I’ve gathered from other conversations at the Main Place- it’s common among Newark’s network of homeless to offer the drug to others often free of charge. That’s a considerably more challenging habit to break- when the drug you’re trying to shake finds you more often than you find it. 

This widespread, minimal-effort availability compounded with the stress of being homeless and without their child is what makes maintaining sobriety a challenge for Matthew and Jenna, but not one that they aren’t up for. And recently, they’ve been on their game- in reward, they are granted longer, more regular visits with their son. On the day I first met the couple, they were only five days away from what would be their first visit with Matty in six months. 

“We stay sober, good things happen. A lot more boring though!” she jokes, quick to clarify, “It’s so worth it.” 

“Living death”

The two stay in separate shelters, Jenna at the Center for New Beginnings and Matthew at the Salvation Army. New Beginnings is a women’s shelter for those fleeing domestic violence, a place Jenna is eligible to stay at because of continued stalking and threats from her former partner. This separation, in tandem with the absence of their son, leave Jenna and Matthew raw and vulnerable to return to drug use, as it would anyone. 

Jenna has trouble sleeping, “from so many years of doing meth”. She thinks her nerves are fried. Some nights falling asleep isn’t much better. She tells me she’s recently been prescribed Ambien as a sleep aid but is nervous about its potential for dependency. She suffers from PTSD and anxiety from years of abuse from a former partner. Above all else, though, being without Matty is what troubles her the most. 

“I have nightmares about losing my son. I wake up just screaming and crying.” 

It’s not hard to understand, on a basic level, how being forced by circumstance into relinquishing custody over your child would feel demoralizing, shameful, like a complete strip of an identity you believed no one could possibly take away. Jenna’s experience, however, is symptomatic of an even more gravely profound psychological effect. In the majority of the research conducted surrounding family separation and custody loss, the effects endured by the children are central to the research and arguments. A few studies, primarily in Canada, however, have conducted thorough research on the experiences and mental health of women who have lost custody of their children. One study conducted in Manitoba province examined both the mental health of women who had lost custody of their children as well as the mental health of women whose children had died to see how the mental health of those women compared. The study found that mothers who lost custody of their children demonstrated worse mental health outcomes than mothers whose children had actually died.

It’s a phenomenon known as “living death”- a sense of loss that is at once illusory and grounded in a painful reality. Your child is not dead, but there is a significant physical loss. He is not there. You can’t see him, hold him, speak with him, for months at a time. It brings into a more considerable perspective why Matthew and Jenna have an overflowing collection of photos not just of Matty, but of them with him. They post to Facebook near-obsessively, sharing every update, and show me upwards of twenty photos that to me, look identical- the couple standing behind a blue-eyed carbon-copy of Jenna, grinning widely, their arms draped over him protectively, all three of their cheeks pressing together, dimple-to-dimple. To me, the photos look like Christmas cards. To Matthew and Jenna, they serve as tangible reminders. He may not be with them, but he is real and he is theirs. 

The generally worse experience of mothers who have experienced custody loss than those who have experienced child loss, researchers believe can be chalked up to the differences in the way those two experiences are perceived by those living outside of it. Child death is publicly understood to be one of the most devastating things a mother or father could experience. Families who experience the loss of a child are met with an outpouring of sympathy, social and communal support. Their grief is understood to be deserved and necessary, they are joined in their mourning. The grief experienced by parents who have lost custody, however, is disenfranchised. It’s an ugly truth, but there are societal expectations and rule-keeping about who gets to grieve, when, and for how long. Parents who have lost custody of their children are perceived as being at fault for that loss of custody, often with little acknowledgment of the forces that cornered them into that custody loss: poverty, mental illness, or addiction. They are considered failures and therefore have not “earned” public mourning. Their pain is swallowed and repressed, out of fear that any expressive display of it will be met with more even judgment and shame. These mothers and fathers are experiencing the same searing feeling of loss as parents whose children have died, but with none of the support afforded to parental bereavement. 

“Bad parents” and digital stone-throwing

This attitude is especially prevalent in the case of custody loss and drug use. Parents who use drugs are almost unequivocally scorned in the public narrative. The War on Drugs sparked widespread moral panic and built a narrative that continues to dominate the popular understanding: to be a drug user and to be a good parent who loves and cares for her children are mutually exclusive. The stereotypical drug-using parent is most commonly assumed to be uncaring, neglectful, and too concerned with their drug of choice to feel the same emotional attachment as parents who do not use. That is an especially dangerous assumption. It is one thing to recognize the effects of a drug and the effects that could impede an individual’s ability to parent, it is another entirely to suggest that individuals who use or are addicted to drugs are somehow wired to love their children less, or not at all. It is a baseless, dehumanizing approach to an issue that has profound, real-life consequences. 

White, middle to upper-middle-class mothers who do not use drugs are considered to be the ideal parents. Raising children is hard enough regardless of a family’s situation. It becomes considerably harder when you factor in low-income, issues with mental health or residual trauma, and addiction. Every parent will have missteps and every parent has shortcomings. The difference lies in the way those errors and shortcomings are scrutinized. When mothers who do not use drugs endure difficulties typical to parenting, especially with respect to situational adversity, they are usually not blamed as individuals. Drug users are one of the most widely misunderstood populations in the United States. That misunderstanding, in turn, makes them some of the most greatly stigmatized and condemned as well. This is especially true of drug users raising children. 

In 2016, a Facebook post made by the police department of East Liverpool, Ohio went viral. The post included a cellphone photo of two adults inside of a car, both unconscious from a heroin overdose. In the backseat was a small, pajama-clad child, staring wide-eyed at the camera head-on, likely unable to see the slouching necks and gaping mouths of the adults in front of him. The police department granted neither the child or his guardians the courtesy of privacy by blurring or concealing their faces in the original Facebook post. The post received nearly 12,000 “reacts”, 12,000 comments, and was shared around 27,000 times. Every paper, magazine, and media conglomerate seems to have gotten their hands on the story: The incident and the police’s radical decision to share it was reported exhaustively and extensively, from local sources like PennLive.com to the Los Angeles Times to Complex. Most outlets who shared the image opted to blur or conceal the face of the child but kept the parents’ faces untouched and easily identifiable. In other words, while reporters called the image “disturbing”, “shocking” or “graphic”, there were few attempts to make it any less so. Many also identified the individuals by first and last name, hometown, and highlighted any and all previous criminal charges. In an article covering the incident, and the police’s decision to post it, The Daily Mail captioned the photograph, “Shamed: Police in East Liverpool, Ohio, shared on Facebook this shocking image showing [name omitted] and [name omitted] passed out in their car with the woman's child in the backseat after a suspected heroin overdose”. It is a visceral, jarring image that turned a couple who had suffered an overdose into public symbols for the scope and intensity of the addiction crisis nearly overnight. The caption on the photo, written by the department, reads, 

“We are well aware that some may be offended by these images and for that we are truly sorry, but it is time that the non drug using public sees what we are now dealing with on a daily basis. The poison known as heroin has taken a strong grip on many communities not just ours, the difference is we are willing to fight this problem until it's gone and if that means we offend a few people along the way we are prepared to deal with that.”

The police department’s decision to share the image, especially without blurring the faces of the individuals pictured was one shunned by some and heralded by many. It is a decision the department defended, citing the necessity of spreading awareness and vouching for the child, who “can’t speak for himself”. Which is true, he can’t. Still, sharing a photograph of a young child and his guardians suffering a medical emergency is an awfully strange way to “speak for” that child. A quick look over more recent posts made by the department on Facebook makes me think they’d continue to stand by it- their profile is made up almost entirely of photos of clearly distraught individuals in the department’s custody, faces clearly visible and accompanied by a caption detailing which drug they’d been found with and how much of it. It’s a toxic practice not uncommon across departments in cities and towns struggling with addiction. Front and center on the website landing page for the Central Ohio Drug Enforcement Task Force is their “Tweak of The Week” feature, sharing an unflattering photo of a Licking County resident arrested on drug charges along with their full name and the committed offense. It’s a form of digital stone-throwing that renders drug users, often ones going through unspeakable pain, spectacles for the non-drug-using population to mock, ridicule and humiliate.

When police departments and media outlets use addicts’ faces, lives, and experiences as symbols for a crisis they may be raising awareness, but it’s a hollow kind of awareness better suited for clickbait than it is for structural change. Photographs like the one of that family in the car are void of any nuance, leaving the untrained eye to assume that couple and ones like them are selfish, irresponsible, and unconcerned for the wellbeing of the child in their care. These images stripped of any and all context lead audiences to conclusions backed by stereotypical modes of reconciling addiction and drug use, combined with the gut-instinct many of us feel when we see a child in danger. That is a lethal combination, stirring a reaction rooted in pathos rather than a complex understanding of this couple’s unique situation. Those assumptions do harm that goes beyond just permeating the public zeitgeist. They’re how we wind up with the arguments that Naloxone distribution programs are a waste- if addicts didn’t want to die, they just wouldn’t use. And they certainly don’t deserve ownership over their children. It further marginalizes those who use drugs as deviant, bad people who in turn are made to be “bad parents”. It goes beyond just nasty, cruel rhetoric- it is also inconsistent with how many psychologists, researchers, and social workers view and understand these situations. 

“Parents want to take care of their children”

I spoke over the phone with Celeste Nichols, the placement unit supervisor at Licking County Job and Family Services. Celeste is an almost 25-year veteran of the agency, and oversees a team of eight coordinators responsible for home assessments and placing children who have been removed from their parents’ custody into foster or kinship care. Kids like Matty. In her two decades of service to the agency, she has had a front-row seat to the ebbs and flows of the county’s foster care system over time. She is a true public servant- speaking not only with impressively broad knowledge but a keen, empathetic understanding toward the sensitive nature of her work, as well. She has witnessed harsh cuts to budgets, layoffs of social workers, and changing priorities within the agency as it attempts to nimbly pivot with the economic and social changes of the county as a whole. She chuckles dryly, remembering a time where the agency was often involved in reports of parents using marijuana, something that in a county ravaged by opioid and methamphetamine use now feels silly by comparison. 

“It’d have to be pretty excessive use of marijuana to get us involved now, for it to actually impact the way someone parents.”

The agency’s eyes are now set on the kind of drug use where there is a greater potential for risk, based on the nature and effects of those drugs, for children to be harmed. Celeste explains to me that the agency looks at every situation on a case-by-case basis with consideration made for all factors. For instance, an overdose related to opioid use that renders one or both parents unconscious certainly interferes with a parent’s ability to care for and protect that child, but less so in the case of a ten-year-old child capable of contacting EMS than for a toddler who cannot speak or operate a phone. 

 “When it comes down to it, the law says you have a right to raise your children the way you see fit unless you are hurting them,” Celeste explains.   

Still, it is the responsibility of the agency to intervene when those personal choices are creating danger for the children involved, even if not deliberately. 

“Now, meth use, the impact of those drugs on someone’s ability to parent is typically very significant. People tend to hallucinate, become paranoid and act on their paranoid delusions, and that certainly can put children at a much higher risk than ‘okay, they smoked some marijuana and they’re sleeping through the night. I don’t want to downplay that, but we don’t get involved because of illegal activity unless that illegal activity is setting the children up somehow for neglect or abuse or dependency.” 

Celeste makes it clear that drug use or illegal behavior alone is not grounds for loss of custody, or even involvement from child welfare services. The agency aims to keep children out of harm’s way. The best way to do that, excluding extreme circumstances where abuse or negligence is a factor and placement into substitute custody is of the utmost necessity, is to keep the family together. 

“If we place a child in substitute care, that is a trauma. It is a trauma for everyone in the family. And children do not thank us for taking them from their parents.”

But in Licking County, with the use of drugs that do in many cases create those more critical risk factors reaching crisis-level, the number of children placed into substitute care has, in turn, become a crisis as well. 

“Our numbers have steadily grown. At the beginning of 2013, we had 295 children in care on January 1st. On January 1st of 2017, we had 366 children in care. Those numbers had steadily increased, with a little dip in 2016. In 2015, 60% of those children that were in care, their families were being impacted by opiates. The number of children impacted by opiates has remained relatively steady, it’s really only about a third of our cases now. But all of that time, if you take all substances, it averages about 80-85% of cases [where substance abuse played a role in the loss of custody]. In Licking County, consistently, the issue is meth.” 

It may be challenging for some to understand, with the influence of stigma surrounding drug users, “junkies”, and drug-using parents as selfish, but the emotional harm done to a child by taking them from their parents is often more direly consequential to the child than their being raised by parents who use. The state, for the most part, recognizes the importance of keeping families together. After all, the bonds between mother and child or father and child are some of the most intimate and rewarding interpersonal connections we can experience as human beings. Celeste and her department are committed to finding solutions where they can work with the parents to find the help necessary for them to maintain custody, rather than demonizing the parents. 

“From our perspective, if we can help a family resolve their problems, you have to start with the thinking that parents want to take care of their children. Even parents who lose custody of their children love them.”

There is no question about that. Jenna and Matthew express extreme anxiety over being without him, not knowing when they’ll see him next, and are well aware of how he could be suffering, too. They express guilt over wanting so badly to see him but are fearful of causing more confusion or making him upset when the visit is over and they have to part ways again. 

“This little boy, he’s so strong,” Jenna gushes. 

Celeste speaks to those fears in our interview, the way children handle being placed into substitute custody, 

“It’s traumatic for everyone. We do really look at that as being a trauma. Doing this for as long as I’ve been doing it, I’ve seen a lot of kids come through here. It’s very interesting to see which children, and you can’t always predict it- children can be very resilient but not all children are. It’s hard to predict which children will be able to bounce back from that, and which will never really emotionally recover.”

She mentions specifically reactive attachment disorder- a condition not uncommon in children who have been separated from their parents that renders them unable to form close emotional bonds with other adults, too shellshocked by the sudden loss of who, up until that point, was their primary caretaker. 

“Those are the children, who, over time, can have really serious mental health issues as children and also as adults. Borderline personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, those are the things we see longterm.” 

With respect to all of these challenges, Celeste maintains the steadfast opinion that rehabilitation and reunification of families should be diligently sought after so the children and their parents can return to a sense of normalcy and begin, slowly but surely, to heal. When it comes to working with families impacted by addiction, Celeste and her colleagues take an approach grounded not only in her many years of first-hand experience but empathy as well. The law, however, limits how far that empathy can take them.  

“We have twenty-two months to get someone sober,” 

In 1997, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). The act was a major rehaul of the foster care system. The law was written aiming to shorten the average amount of time children removed from their biological parents spent in foster care, and expedite the process of “permanent placement” of children through adoption. In doing so, the legislation implemented a policy mandating that states file to terminate the parental rights of any parent whose children have been in foster care for fifteen of the most recent twenty-two months. Cases are subject to this scrutiny regardless of whether those children were compulsorily removed from their parents or if the parents relinquished that custody voluntarily. If a child is in substitute care for fifteen out of twenty-two months, that constitutes parental abandonment. Even if the parents have stayed in regular contact with their child. Even if they have visited them at every instance they are allowed and able. Even if the parents are working tirelessly to improve their situation to where they feel sound about bringing their child back into their lives. There are sometimes exceptions made if a social worker can convince a judge to reconsider, but only an outside party can convince a judge of your deservedness at more time, a second chance. No amount of birthday cards, long-awaited hugs, or housing applications can convince a judge you are deserving enough to be called “Mom” or “Dad” again. 

This policy was a major departure from the basis on which intervention of child protective services had always functioned- until the bill was signed into law, the goal of reunification and the importance of keeping families together had always been considered paramount and in the best interest of all involved. ASFA in practice effectively communicates that in child custody cases, there are two separate parties with two separate interests: children and their parents. It’s a kind of thinking that often villifies the parents as agents at odds with their child’s best interests, rather than viewing the family as a complete unit that needs help returning to a healthy, happy, functional state. 

It’s a policy that disproportionately harms American parents who are homeless or living in poverty, parents who are people of color, and it greatly harms parents struggling with addiction. Celeste tells me it’s one of the greatest barriers to reunification when parents are trying to get sober and regain custody.   

 “Backsliding, it’s a huge part of the recovery process. It’s normal for people to backslide. But the law is that in a span of twenty-two months if a child is in substitute care for fifteen out of those twenty-two months, those parents lose parental rights. That is a huge challenge- we have twenty-two months to get someone sober,” said Celeste. 

The fifteen-month rule of ASFA is completely incongruent with the realities of addiction and recovery. While relapse is not a guaranteed part of every person’s recovery process, as common myth denotes, it is still highly common. Someone relapsing in recovery does not mean their recovery has failed. It does not mean they will never be able to maintain sobriety, or get a job, or go back to school. It certainly does not mean someone will never be able to adequately care for and love their children. 

“And as I’m sure you have seen, there aren’t many options here [in Licking county] for treatment. So if you’re on a waiting list for treatment for six months, then try and get sober, and then you might backslide. That is a huge challenge to get all of that done in 22 months.” 

So if an addicted parent loses or relinquishes custody of their child in order to seek treatment, they may not get into that treatment program for six months. Treatment programs can take as little as thirty days or as long as six months to complete, depending on each person’s individual needs with respect to possible concurrent mental health diagnoses or physical health issues. If a parent were to lose or relinquish their child into substitute care, wait six months to receive treatment, and attend 90-day treatment, they are already drifting dangerously close to the fifteen-month threshold. Matters are made worse if they are homeless. In Licking County, the average wait time on housing lists is anywhere from one to four months. If they experience a relapse, as many addicts do, the process repeats, and they will more likely than not have their parental rights terminated. Someone can make every effort possible to achieve and maintain sobriety, reunite their family, rebuild broken trust with their children, and reclaim the title of “parent”, but if that process takes them longer than fifteen months, the state can and will deem them unfit. 

 ASFA and its fifteen-month policy are an act of dismissal of an individual’s right to fight for themselves and for their families. ASFA places a much stronger preference for adoption and adoptive parents, even providing financial incentives to encourage adoption. It is a dismissal of the hope that people struggling with addiction do recover, that they can re-establish their lives as they once knew them. ASFA is designed in a way that demonstrates favoritism toward foster families seeking to adopt a child. More covertly, the act allows for favoritism toward a specific type of individual, one who displays the hegemonic ideal of a “good” parent. In cases of whether or not a parent is apt to care for their children safely, there is no call a judge can make while remaining objective. Much like the reaction thousands of people had to the photo of the child and his overdosed parents shared by the East Liverpool police, the way judgment is cast on drug-using parents is influenced more by moral outrage rather than it is by consideration for what a child and his family might need or desire. The fifteen-months rule is an allowance and exercise of the rampant prejudice, stigmatization, and marginalization of those who use drugs and those who are mentally ill in our country.     

“We’d ride our bikes there if we had to.”

But in the face of immense structural challenges and prejudice, Jenna and Matthew are a portrait of perseverance. Ironically, watching Matthew and Jenna together, they look like the kind of parents every child would want- affectionate, caring, always anticipating the needs of the other person. They are committed to their goals of recovery from addiction and trauma, getting rehoused, and regaining custody of Matty. They have each other’s backs to the hilt.  

The second time I speak with the couple, about two weeks after our first interview, they giddily catch me up to speed on their visit with Matty in Pickerington. 

“We got a ride, luckily,” says Jenna. 

“We’d ride our bikes there if we had to,” Matthew added.

Their descriptions of Matty paint him as a sort of wunderkind of emotional intelligence, adjusting as best he can with regard to the circumstances. Jenna certainly worries about how her and Matthew’s absence confuses and upsets him, but is relieved by how well he has attached to Emma and Vanessa without losing sight of who his parents are. Jenna tells me after their visit, he asked why the family couldn’t exist as one, cohesive unit. He doesn’t want to lose Emma and Vanessa, but he misses his mom and dad.  

“He said to her [Emma], I love you, and I love Vanessa but I love mommy and daddy, too. Why won’t you let us all live together?”       

 It’s a question nearly impossible to answer for a seven-year-old, who is simultaneously emotionally vulnerable and too persistently curious to accept a vague answer. It’s a question that Matthew and Jenna, of course, understand more fully, but also find themselves tormented by. Every day they are without him passes more and more slowly. The passage of time only compounds the anxiety that comes with their separation from him, makes them more painfully aware of the sand in the hourglass. To stay sober amidst that stress, they have to keep busy- their pastimes of choice include picking up litter in the city’s east end, trips to Redemption Church on Main street, and using apps on their phone to decorate photos of them and Matty with heart-shaped digital stickers. 

And, of course, sometimes political messaging. Matthew and Jenna’s Facebook profiles both make use of the #FAMILIESBELONGTOGETHER photo frame. Their use of the frame, created by the immigration advocate nonprofit RAICES could be read by some as a blundering misunderstanding of the phrase’s original intention. I could even see how some could read it as offensive, for a white couple in central Ohio to co-op messaging meant address an issue affecting people of color at the border. I don’t see it that way. I see it as a couple identifying with a sentiment that to them, is just as much of an absolute. The experiences of parental custody loss at the border and custody loss in the throes of poverty and addiction in the states certainly look vastly different- the safety and comfort afforded to children in most American foster homes are a far cry from the conditions in which migrant children are kept, and that’s a vital distinction I would never discount. But the suffering endured by any parent whose children are removed from their custody is nearly (and sometimes fully) unbearable regardless of how that removal came about. Matthew and Jenna’s story in both comparison and contrast to the denouncement of the family separation policy for migrants leads me wonder- if we believe that Families Belong Together, how and why do we decide which ones don’t? 

I look over at Jenna tapping away at her cellphone, using an app she often busies herself with while Matthew talks with their caseworker. It’s a sort of virtual coloring book, providing blank templates she can fill in as she pleases. She nods her head over at Matthew, and beckons me to look at the phone. 

“I’m making this for him,” she says, smiling. 

On the screen is a stencil she’s fashioned with her own selection bright shades of blue and red, with one word in bold, comic book-style block lettering- “SuperDad”.