It's History Of Childhood Disadvantage By Veronica Strong-Boag Summary

Fostering Nation? Canada Confronts It’s History of Childhood Disadvantage, written by Veronica Strong-Boag, discusses the history of children in foster homes and institutions in Anglo-Canada. Strong-Boag examines the phases of fostering procedures being modified due to new polices being presented in Canada during the 1900s. These children would be removed willingly by the parent because of financial issues or by force through the government because of abuse or neglect. She argues that Canadians and their government failed to protect children who were abandoned and underprivileged throughout the 20th century. Even though she argues that Canadians and their government did a poor job of protecting children in the foster system, there was an addition of reforms developing within Canada. These included mothers’ allowances during WW1, unemployment insurance in the 1930s and 1940s and family

allowance in 1945. Despite this, the state lacked efforts to ensure neglected children received better care. The use of primary and secondary sources provides a wide-ranging account of government records and non-government organizations to uncover the incidents that occurred within child protection efforts. I believe this is effective because it offers genuine accounts of people in a variety of circumstances in the history of Canada’s child welfare. This could be effective if there were more accounts of certain minorities in the 20th century. However, Fostering Nations?, provides a clear insight of the state’s milestones to improve the foster care system, but failed to include the actual protection of the underprivileged.
Strong-Boag organizes her information by phases of development in the foster care system. She begins by explaining how the first phase is the placement of children to their relatives, or in other terms kin, because of abandonment or death of a parent. In terms of race and class, children were at a great disadvantage compared to children in families of wealth and power. Strong-Boag includes how the government introduced the Canada’s Registered Education Savings Plan and Registered Disability Savings Plan at the end of the 20th century for privileged children. The plans given out by the government verify that during the first phase, they had failed to protect children who did not have the means to obtain these benefits. Therefore, the government failed to provide deprived children of gaining access to the plans; by which they fall back into a repeated cycle of poverty. The cycle of kin taking care of disadvantaged relatives was not improving the means for children to succeed. As a result, Strong-Boag explains how the state would break the cycle of kinship looking after family, by providing institutions to develop a responsible system, which produce horrific narratives.
The next section of Fostering Nations? describes the foster care system, discussing the lives of children in institutions placed by the government. According to Strong-Boag, industrial and reform schools were set out to be life changing for disadvantaged and delinquent youngsters. During the 20th century, there were many different types of institutions: orphanages, residential schools, private schools, infant homes, and reform schools. Although, there were many different types of institutions, Strong-Boag argues that all these enterprises promised re-socialization that was superior to that provided by their families. This is where the government was lacking when it came to the protection of needy children. Not only did the government not protect the children, but they also wanted to condemn the roots of children, especially those of minorities. While these schools were meant to re-socialize children, the result was groups of people being deteriorated. As an illustration, Strong-Boag refers to the Native Canadian children being placed in residential schools. The reason why Native children faced horrific treatment was due to white Canadians wanting to colonize the culture and families who were situated in the way of White domination. The residential schools destroyed families, caused deaths, and added to the collapse of culture within the Native community. The government did not succeed in the re-socializing Native Canadians; as a result, they ended up facing growing caseloads of indigenous children. Consequently, the caseloads required the foster care system to attend to more children. Under those circumstances, this developed an unstable aspect to the foster care system.
Strong-Boag presents the second phase of child protection, by addressing new aspects to the foster care system. By the 1920s, there was a clear system of fostering. The concept of fostering by this period had transformed enormously. Children had three options: return to their birth families, stay in supposedly temporary arrangements until maturity, or eventually be consigned to institutions. Strong-Boag uses the established provincial legislation of Nova Scotia Society’s Prevention of Cruelty created by John Naylor, which inspired the 1883 Children’s Protection Act, and its 1893 Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to and the Better Protection of Children of Ontario for the state to remove children from sad situations at home. Even though the government did their best to remove children from unsecure households, children were often placed with families of the working-class. She demonstrates an effort made by authorities to find homes for unfortunate infants and older youngsters, but the majority of working-class families could afford new members to the household without supplementary funds. Thus, this does not change the livelihood of the children in the foster care system willing to succeed. The inadequate children are being taken from unfortunate situations where they have to survive and fend for themselves. Strong-Boag demonstrates that the efforts to help children was lacking by the government. The government should have done everything in their power to help foster the new generations that would lead the nation. This results in Canada having failed in the protection of the children of their nation. Strong-Boag uses tools such as, documents and remedies from the government to prove how they have failed. However, there were some minority groups she did not go into brief detail about or did not mention, which could have made her argument stronger against the government.
There is a strong case of gender related topics within Fostering Nations?, which gives a great overview of child welfare in Canada.

Strong-Boag is not a feminist, or a marxists, but she is for equality amongst gender. This is why the book revolves around aspects of gender. To illustrate, part of chapter five discusses unwed-mothers and their role within the child welfare system. Strong-Boag pulls together different aspects of gender during the development of foster care to prove that the government was unsuccessful at achieving protection for children. She wanted to ensure that there was an equal and fair account for each gender. When it came to the discussion of children, there was not necessarily a distinction of boy or girl, but when it came to parents, she provided roles of men and women, and how women tried to break those barriers through child welfare. She uses the Vancouver Women’s Christian Temperance Union to describe women breaking through their roles in the household. This proves her perspective of tackling down state support for child

welfare.
Strong-Boag uses a variety of methods to help argue the state failing to improve the welfare for children in Canada. These include, newspapers, statistics, and government documents. This provides a diverse pool of information allowing the author to create a proper perspective. Since most of the sources are government related, she can formulate a stronger case against the government. This allowed her to: provide evidence of the governments mistakes, their efforts, the Acts and policies created, and special remedies to strength the foster care system. The incidents that occurred within the phases of foster care were provided by government accounts that allowed her to given in-depth insight to how the foster care system formulated.
Veronica Strong-Boag’s argument was convincing because of the various aspects she used to conduct her book. She used an excellent organized layout that grasped the reader’s attention, which allowed her points to be made easier. Strong-Boag also used a great number of primary and secondary sources, ranging from government documents and newspapers. Her title speaks for itself. Fostering Nation?, in simple terms means to develop and grow a group of people. From the beginning of the book Strong-Boag’s opening sentence in the introduction she states that, “Fostering Nation?, is a sad book.” Strong-Boag captivates the reader and enhances the reader’s understanding of what the state tried to accomplish for child welfare in Canada.
Despite all the evidence Strong-Boag uses to make her argument. Since she is discussing the history of Canadian child welfare, she thoroughly discussed the mistreatment of the Native Canadians. Although, the Native Canadians are a major part of her argument, she left out some important minority groups such as the Canadian Chinese immigrants or more detail about African Canadians. These minority groups are important to the argument because of the variety of culture Canada has. She cannot make an argument about the history of child welfare in Canada without including Canada’s multicultural people. She mentions aspects of French Canadians and Native Canadians, but mostly Anglo-Canadians. Regardless of whether or not European origin children were the most valuable to rescue, she should have included a whole chapter based on the significance of minorities in Canada and why they did not appear in public care till the 1960s. As a result, a person who is using the book for a review can only get a certain perspective of the book concerning white Canadians. Chiefly, this strengthens, her argument about the state trying to improve foster care, but was proven unsuccessful.
In conclusion, Veronica Strong-Boag has been well regarded in this area of research, but Fostering Nation? was a continuation of her 2006 release of Finding Families, Finding Ourselves: English Canada Confronts Adoption from the Nineteenth Century to the 1900s. She truly examines all aspects for this topic. Since, half of her life’s work has gone to the contribution of topic of foster care and adoption, she is knowledgeable and understands different perspectives to a great advantage. For anyone doing research on the topic of child-welfare in Canada, this book would definitely be a good guide. In conclusion, Veronica Strong-Boag’s organization and presentation are the best features of the book. The book is clear, concise, and very well organized. Ultimately, allowing readers to truly grasp the perspective of child welfare that Strong-Boag addressed. Overall, Strong-Boag deserves big praises for Fostering Nation?.