Why does the press only seem to care about broken attachments for border-crossing children?

For children tossed around in foster care, for example, the silence around broken bonding is deafening. It’s as though notions of bonding, attachment, and the developmental needs of children do not exist.

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In the current crisis of opioid addiction and foster care, many children form attachments to a family who wants to adopt them, often waiting up to three years for a birth parent or blood relative to come forward or enter drug treatment. These children live in foster care Never-Never Land, but they also bond with a family while they wait. All too often, these children are then ripped out of the only family they have ever known, suffering the trauma of broken attachments, over and over again. This is the tragedy that doesn’t make the news.

Consider James. He’s one of more than 400,000 children in foster care right now. James came home from the hospital with a loving couple, and for three years he flourished in their home. His birth mother was addicted to opioids. She lost custody of two earlier siblings. James visited with her occasionally. The court was slowly, slowly moving toward terminating her parental rights with James and giving him a stable “home of permanence” with this couple.

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