Liberal Arts & Professional Studies | http://www.yorku.ca/laps | York U
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"Essential Antecedents: The First Parents of Canada's Foster Children", a presentation at York University's School of Women's Studies Lecture Series by Dr. Veronica Strong-Boag, professor of women's and gender studies and educational studies at the University of British Columbia. March 4, 2011

Foster parents have received more attention from scholars than have the original parents and relatives of children who ended up in foster care. This lecture examines foster children's earliest kin. It explores how poverty always made some adults vulnerable to difficulties as parents and to the loss of progeny. It then turns to women whose maternal roles have been especially suspect as well as central. It next considers biological fathers, the central but often off-stage figures, who haunt the narratives of many transfers of youngsters to state care but who rarely receive close scrutiny. Finally, it sets out Canadian's evolving response to the original parents of the children who became candidates for care.