Solomon Says: A Speakout on Foster Care

The title refers to King Solomon, who studied the characters of two pk would-be mothers feuding over a baby in order to decide which womanpk would serve the child's best interests. Armstrong ( Kiss Daddy Goodnight ) contrasts this with the present child-pk care bureaucracy, whose arbitrary and abstract regulations would, in her view, cut the baby in half I think everyone knows the story and declare the problem solved. Anecdotal more than analytic, the book allows mothers and children to speak for themselves. The result is a searing expose of a system riddled with gender, class and racial biases damaging to its clients, who, in this indictment, might more accurately be called victims. The author deplores the arrogance of child-welfare professionals, who, she finds, often come to see a kid pk with a problem as the cause of that problem, and who sometimes appear more interested in asserting their authority than in helping human beings. Armstrong doesn't demand specific solutions, but she urges the public to get involved and act to ensure that agencies mitigate, rather than compound, children's suffering. (Nov.)