Why Being a Foster Child Made Me a Conservative
By Rob Henderson
Mr. Henderson served in the Air Force before going to Yale, where he majored in psychology. He graduated on Monday.May 21, 2018
Credit...Arad Golan Coll/Falmouth UniversityNEW HAVEN —
There aren’t many conservative students at Yale: fewer than 12 percent, according to a survey by our student newspaper. There are fewer former foster children. I am one of the rare students on campus who can claim both identities.
My unusual upbringing has shaped my conservatism. My birth mother was addicted to drugs. As a young child, I spent five years in foster care. At age 7, I was adopted, but for a long time after that I was raised in broken homes.
Foster care, broken homes and military service have fashioned my judgments. My experiences drive me to reflect on what environments are best for children. Certainly not the ones I came from.
Where I came from can be understood through my name: Robert Kim Henderson. All three names were taken from different adults.
Robert comes from my supposed biological father. The only information I have about him is his name from a document provided by a social worker responsible for my case when I was a foster child.
My middle name, Kim, comes from my biological mother. It was her family name. She succumbed to drug addiction, rendering her unable to care for me.
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And my last name: Henderson. It comes from my former adoptive father. After my adoptive mother left him, he severed ties with me in order to hurt her. He figured that my emotional pain from his desertion would be transmitted to my adoptive mother. He was right. The three people who gave me their names have something in common: All abandoned me. None took responsibility.
Last year, a fellow student told me I was a victim. Yale is the only place where someone has said this to me. I responded that if someone had told me I was a victim when I was a kid, I would never have made it to the Air Force, where I served for eight years, or to Yale. I would have given up. When I was 10, a teacher told me that if I applied myself, I could alter my future. This advice changed my life. From my response, my fellow student inferred that I was not as progressive as him. As our conversation unfolded, he asked, “What does it actually mean to be a conservative?”
For me, the answer is that people who came before us weren’t stupid. They were stunted in many ways. But not in every way. Older people have insights worthy of our attention.
One piece of inherited wisdom is the value of the two-parent family. It’s not fashionable to talk about this. How people raise their children is a matter of preference. But it is not really up for debate that the two-parent home is, on average, better for children.
First, two parents can provide their children more resources, including emotional support, encouragement and help with homework. One conscientious parent, no matter how heroic, cannot do the work of two. Second, single-parent households have a lower standard of living, which is associated with lower school grades and test scores.
Here is an example of the success of intact families from one of my psychology classes. The professor asked students to anonymously respond to a question about parental background. Out of 25 students, only one student besides me did not grow up in a traditional two-parent family. It’s no accident that most of my peers at Yale came from intact families.
Outcomes are worse for foster children. Ten percent of them enroll in college, and 3 percent graduate. To my knowledge, among more than 5,000 undergraduates at Yale my senior year, the number of former foster children was under 10.
Along with taking accumulated wisdom seriously, I understand conservative philosophy to mean that the role of the individual in making decisions and undertaking obligations is paramount. Individuals have rights. But they also have responsibilities.
For instance, when I say parents should prioritize their children over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame individuals rather than a nebulous foe like poverty. They are mostly right. Many people who come from privilege do not like placing blame on ordinary people. They prefer to blame ideologies, institutions, abstractions.
A cynical interpretation of this attitude is that some students want to keep the competition down. Fewer children raised in good families means less competition for those at the top.
My skin crawls when people use me as an example of a person who can shoulder the burdens of a nontraditional upbringing and succeed. They use my success as an argument for lax attitudes about parenting. But I am one of the lucky ones.
Many people have asked me how I turned out to be relatively successful, given my turbulent childhood. My answer is simple: During adolescence, I had the benefit of two parents, my adoptive mother and her partner, and I believed I had control of my future.
My adoptive mother and her partner raised me from middle school through high school in the early to mid-2000s in a rural California town called Red Bluff. They made a stable home for me. We had dinner together every weeknight. We talked about minutiae. They would ask me, “How was school today?” And I would respond with the usual “It was fine.” They gave me unsolicited advice. I was sarcastic in response. And we loved one another.
I experienced a stable family, if only for a few years. Though they experienced homophobia and struggled financially, they never let it get in the way of doing the right thing for their son.
Ordinary adults taking responsibility made all the difference for me. I maintain that the agency of individuals will lead to fewer impoverished childhoods.
If today that makes me a conservative, great. I take responsibility for that.
Rob Henderson, who served in the Air Force, graduated on Monday from Yale, where he majored in psychology.
My unusual upbringing has shaped my conservatism. My birth mother was addicted to drugs. As a young child, I spent five years in foster care. At age 7, I was adopted, but for a long time after that I was raised in broken homes.
Foster care, broken homes and military service have fashioned my judgments. My experiences drive me to reflect on what environments are best for children. Certainly not the ones I came from.
Where I came from can be understood through my name: Robert Kim Henderson. All three names were taken from different adults.
Robert comes from my supposed biological father. The only information I have about him is his name from a document provided by a social worker responsible for my case when I was a foster child.
My middle name, Kim, comes from my biological mother. It was her family name. She succumbed to drug addiction, rendering her unable to care for me.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
And my last name: Henderson. It comes from my former adoptive father. After my adoptive mother left him, he severed ties with me in order to hurt her. He figured that my emotional pain from his desertion would be transmitted to my adoptive mother. He was right. The three people who gave me their names have something in common: All abandoned me. None took responsibility.
Last year, a fellow student told me I was a victim. Yale is the only place where someone has said this to me. I responded that if someone had told me I was a victim when I was a kid, I would never have made it to the Air Force, where I served for eight years, or to Yale. I would have given up. When I was 10, a teacher told me that if I applied myself, I could alter my future. This advice changed my life. From my response, my fellow student inferred that I was not as progressive as him. As our conversation unfolded, he asked, “What does it actually mean to be a conservative?”
For me, the answer is that people who came before us weren’t stupid. They were stunted in many ways. But not in every way. Older people have insights worthy of our attention.
One piece of inherited wisdom is the value of the two-parent family. It’s not fashionable to talk about this. How people raise their children is a matter of preference. But it is not really up for debate that the two-parent home is, on average, better for children.
First, two parents can provide their children more resources, including emotional support, encouragement and help with homework. One conscientious parent, no matter how heroic, cannot do the work of two. Second, single-parent households have a lower standard of living, which is associated with lower school grades and test scores.
Here is an example of the success of intact families from one of my psychology classes. The professor asked students to anonymously respond to a question about parental background. Out of 25 students, only one student besides me did not grow up in a traditional two-parent family. It’s no accident that most of my peers at Yale came from intact families.
Outcomes are worse for foster children. Ten percent of them enroll in college, and 3 percent graduate. To my knowledge, among more than 5,000 undergraduates at Yale my senior year, the number of former foster children was under 10.
Along with taking accumulated wisdom seriously, I understand conservative philosophy to mean that the role of the individual in making decisions and undertaking obligations is paramount. Individuals have rights. But they also have responsibilities.
For instance, when I say parents should prioritize their children over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame individuals rather than a nebulous foe like poverty. They are mostly right. Many people who come from privilege do not like placing blame on ordinary people. They prefer to blame ideologies, institutions, abstractions.
A cynical interpretation of this attitude is that some students want to keep the competition down. Fewer children raised in good families means less competition for those at the top.
My skin crawls when people use me as an example of a person who can shoulder the burdens of a nontraditional upbringing and succeed. They use my success as an argument for lax attitudes about parenting. But I am one of the lucky ones.
Many people have asked me how I turned out to be relatively successful, given my turbulent childhood. My answer is simple: During adolescence, I had the benefit of two parents, my adoptive mother and her partner, and I believed I had control of my future.
My adoptive mother and her partner raised me from middle school through high school in the early to mid-2000s in a rural California town called Red Bluff. They made a stable home for me. We had dinner together every weeknight. We talked about minutiae. They would ask me, “How was school today?” And I would respond with the usual “It was fine.” They gave me unsolicited advice. I was sarcastic in response. And we loved one another.
I experienced a stable family, if only for a few years. Though they experienced homophobia and struggled financially, they never let it get in the way of doing the right thing for their son.
Ordinary adults taking responsibility made all the difference for me. I maintain that the agency of individuals will lead to fewer impoverished childhoods.
If today that makes me a conservative, great. I take responsibility for that.
Rob Henderson, who served in the Air Force, graduated on Monday from Yale, where he majored in psychology.
===
의견 | 위탁아동이 된 것이 나를 보수주의자로 만든 이유 - 뉴욕타임즈
저자: 롭 헨더슨, 2018년 5월 21일
(헨더슨 씨는 공군에서 복무 한 후 예일 대학에 진학하여 심리학을 전공했습니다. 그는 월요일에 졸업했습니다.)
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NEW HAVEN —
예일에는 보수적인 학생이 많지 않습니다. 학생 신문의 조사에 따르면 12% 미만입니다
. 위탁아 출신 학생 도 적습니다. 저는 캠퍼스에서 두 가지 정체성을 모두 주장할 수 있는 몇 안 되는 학생 중 한 명입니다. 저의 특이한 양육 방식이 저의 보수주의를 형성했습니다. 친어머니는 마약 중독자였습니다. 어린 시절에 위탁보호를 5년 동안 받았습니다. 7살 때 입양되었지만 그 후 오랫동안 이혼 가정에서 자랐습니다.
위탁보호, 이혼 가정, 군 복무가 저의 판단을 형성했습니다. 제 경험은 어떤 환경이 아이들에게 가장 좋은지 생각하게 합니다. 확실히 제가 태어난 곳은 아닙니다.
제가 어디에서 왔는지는 제 이름인 Robert Kim Henderson을 통해 알 수 있습니다. 세 이름은 모두 다른 성인에게서 따왔습니다.
Robert는 제 가정의 친부에서 따왔습니다. 그에 대한 유일한 정보는 제가 위탁아였을 때 제 사건을 담당했던 사회복지사가 제공한 문서에 있는 그의 이름뿐입니다.
제 중간 이름인 Kim은 친어머니에서 따왔습니다. 친어머니의 성이었습니다. 그녀는 마약 중독에 굴복하여 나를 돌볼 수 없게 되었습니다.
그리고 제 성: 헨더슨. 이는 제 전 양아버지에게서 따온 것입니다. 양어머니가 그를 떠난 후, 그는 그녀를 다치게 하기 위해 저와의 관계를 끊었습니다. 그는 제가 버림받은 데서 오는 정서적 고통이 양어머니에게 전달될 것이라고 생각했습니다. 그는 옳았습니다. 제 이름을 알려준 세 사람은 공통점이 있습니다. 모두 저를 버렸습니다. 아무도 책임을 지지 않았습니다.
작년에 한 친구가 제가 피해자라고 말했습니다. 예일은 누군가가 제게 이런 말을 한 유일한 곳입니다. 저는 어렸을 때 누군가가 제가 피해자라고 말했다면 8년간 복무했던 공군이나 예일에는 절대 진학하지 못했을 것이라고 대답했습니다. 포기했을 겁니다. 제가 10살 때 한 선생님이 제가 노력하면 미래를 바꿀 수 있다고 말씀하셨습니다. 이 조언이 제 인생을 바꿔놓았습니다. 제 대답을 듣고, 제 동료 학생은 제가 자신만큼 진보적이지 않다고 추론했습니다. 대화가 진행되면서 그는 "보수주의자가 된다는 것은 실제로 무슨 뜻인가요?"라고 물었습니다.
저에게 그 답은 우리보다 먼저 온 사람들은 멍청하지 않았다는 것입니다. 그들은 여러 면에서 성장이 더디었습니다. 하지만 모든 면에서는 아니었습니다. 나이든 사람들은 우리의 관심을 끌 만한 통찰력을 가지고 있습니다.
한 가지 물려받은 지혜는 양부모 가정의 가치입니다. 이에 대해 이야기하는 것은 유행이 아닙니다. 사람들이 자녀를 키우는 방식은 선호도 문제입니다. 그러나 양부모 가정이 평균적으로 자녀에게 더 좋다는 것은 실제로 논쟁의 여지가 없습니다.
첫째, 두 부모는 자녀에게 정서적 지원, 격려 및 숙제 도움을 포함하여 더 많은 자원을 제공할 수 있습니다. 아무리 영웅적이라도 양심적인 부모 한 명은 두 사람의 일을 할 수 없습니다. 둘째, 한부모 가정은 생활 수준이 낮고 이는 낮은 학교 성적과 시험 점수와 관련이 있습니다.
다음은 내 심리학 수업 중 하나에서 온 건전한 가정의 성공 사례입니다. 교수는 학생들에게 부모의 배경에 대한 질문에 익명으로 응답하도록 요청했습니다. 25명의 학생 중 저를 제외한 한 명만이 전통적인 양부모 가정에서 자라지 않았습니다. 예일 대학의 동료들 대부분이 건전한 가정에서 왔다는 것은 우연이 아닙니다.
위탁 아동의 결과는 더 나쁩니다. 그들 중 10%는 대학에 등록하고 3%는 졸업합니다 . 제가 아는 한, 예일 대학에서 4학년 때 5,000명이 넘는 학부생 중 위탁아 출신 아동은 10명 미만이었습니다.
축적된 지혜를 진지하게 받아들이는 것과 더불어, 저는 보수적 철학이 결정을 내리고 의무를 이행하는 데 있어 개인의 역할이 가장 중요하다는 것을 의미한다고 이해합니다. 개인에게는 권리가 있습니다. 하지만 책임도 있습니다.
예를 들어, 부모가 자녀를 직업보다 우선시해야 한다고 말하면 동료들 사이에 불안감이 느껴집니다. 그들은 제가 빈곤과 같은 모호한 적보다는 개인을 비난하고 싶어한다고 생각합니다. 그들은 대체로 옳습니다. 특권층에서 온 많은 사람들은 평범한 사람을 비난하는 것을 좋아하지 않습니다. 그들은 이념, 제도, 추상 개념을 비난하는 것을 선호합니다.
이러한 태도에 대한 냉소적인 해석은 일부 학생들이 경쟁을 줄이고 싶어한다는 것입니다. 좋은 가정에서 자란 아이가 적을수록 상위권에 있는 사람들의 경쟁이 줄어듭니다.
사람들이 저를 비전통적인 양육의 부담을 지고 성공할 수 있는 사람의 예로 들 때 저는 소름이 돋습니다. 그들은 제 성공을 육아에 대한 느슨한 태도에 대한 주장으로 사용합니다. 하지만 저는 운이 좋은 사람 중 하나입니다.
많은 사람들이 격동의 어린 시절을 겪었는데도 어떻게 비교적 성공할 수 있었는지 물었습니다. 제 대답은 간단합니다. 청소년기에 저는 양모와 그녀의 파트너라는 두 부모의 혜택을 받았고, 저는 제 미래를 스스로 통제할 수 있다고 믿었습니다.
제 양모와 그녀의 파트너는 2000년대 초반에서 중반에 캘리포니아의 시골 마을인 레드 블러프에서 중학교부터 고등학교까지 저를 키웠습니다. 그들은 저에게 안정적인 집을 마련해 주었습니다. 우리는 매주 평일 저녁마다 함께 저녁을 먹었습니다. 우리는 사소한 일에 대해 이야기했습니다. 그들은 저에게 "오늘 학교는 어땠어?"라고 물었고 저는 평소처럼 "괜찮았어요."라고 대답했습니다. 그들은 제게 자발적으로 조언을 해 주었습니다. 저는 냉소적으로 대답했습니다. 그리고 우리는 서로를 사랑했습니다.
저는 몇 년 동안만이라도 안정적인 가정을 경험했습니다. 그들은 동성애 혐오증을 겪었고 재정적으로 어려움을 겪었지만, 아들을 위해 옳은 일을 하는 데 결코 방해가 되지 않았습니다.
책임을 지는 평범한 어른들이 저에게는 모든 차이를 만들어 냈습니다. 저는 개인의 행위가 빈곤한 어린 시절을 줄이는 데 도움이 될 것이라고 생각합니다.
오늘날 제가 보수주의자가 된다면, 대단합니다. 저는 그에 대한 책임을 집니다.
====
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