How to Counter Gross Neglect of Homeless Babies and Toddlers
By Authorities Responsible for Their Care
I’m tired of dancing around the source of homelessness. As someone who’s worked in this arena for 4 decades, run (abysmal) shelters, advocated for rights of kids and adults, addressed countless audiences from Congress to California, filmed and produced 100+ videos featuring families experiencing homelessness, written several books on the topic…alright, I’ll stop the self-promoting litany. Hopefully you get the idea. I’ve got cred, for what it’s worth.
Basic baby talk.
Can we agree that from the moment of conception, the innocent embryo is vulnerable to what the mother does?
Let’s just consider nutrition, general health, and stress. If things are good with mom, they’re likely good with bambino. With physical and developmental needs met, the newborn will probably be good. In the early years of development, if adequately cared for and loved, chances are the little one will morph into a functional child. From childhood to early adulthood, assuming things go well — physical needs fulfilled, emotional and mental health in balance — a reasonably healthy adult will emerge.
But, what upends this theory of wellness is often a combination of trauma, poverty, and housing instability, with a hefty dose of racism.
When the baby is neglected (often by parents who underwent the same cycle in their early lives) — when nutrition, health care, housing and environmental conditions are lacking — that’s when development can start to crumble. In addition to these physical needs, the absence of human love and support, which often wanes in hard times, has a tremendous detrimental impact.
What often happens when things fall apart?
Lives teeter, and often tumble into the vortex of poverty and homelessness. Not inevitable, but likely. This happens to kids, youth and adults, often out of sight and beyond the imaginary safety net that has frayed over the past few decades. (The damage can be undone, given the proper support, environment, and circumstances.) With exceptions, these hardships often happen to mother (or caregivers) and their children.
Where does our government fit in?
- Social and economic infrastructure needs to be protected.
- Environmental conditions need to be regulated to keep poisons out of our living spaces and food.
- Housing availability, especially for those unable to afford market rates, needs to be built and maintained at a level that meets the demand.
- Educational opportunities need to be fostered and protected.
- Health care (mental and physical) needs to be available for all.
- Quality childcare for income-challenged households needs to be accessible and affordable.
Those are the basics.
Who ends up on the short end of society’s spectrum, aka ‘needy’?
“The Needy.” I despise that term as it applies to those lacking the basic human needs described above. But “need” applies to these essentials.
Take a look at housing stability.
The Eviction Lab at Princeton sifted through mountains of census data and court records of evictions. They documented those most harmed by evictions:
- Moms, children, especially babies and toddlers. Babies and toddlers were the most affected by eviction (which typically leads to homelessness). The Littles, in their most critical period of development, get slammed with life-changing upheaval.
- Hardest hit, households headed by Black mothers. Black families, headed by single mothers, typically with babies and toddlers, led the pack of households impacted by eviction.
Charts by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University:
The ugly truth/reality…
Rarely are these facts acknowledged. We’ve let property owners, many hedge-funds and corporate entities, ravage those most at risk in our population — babies and toddlers — and the most vulnerable — Black mothers with children.
How to generate outrage?
One response to this human injustice is to shine a light on it.
Meet 3 Champion-Moms, Experts in Homelessness
Despite my best efforts to chronicle family homelessness in these past 20 years, huge gaps still exist in awareness, much less creating the systemic changes needed to address this largely obscure issue.
So I hatched an idea and called in some experts. I have had the pleasure of meeting three moms named “Melissa” in my travels. From Florida, Kansas, and Illinois — all have spent grueling time being homeless with their kids, including little ones. These courageous women agreed to share their expertise with other families in the same straits, something that’s never been done before.
With a tremendous contribution from my friend/colleague Diana Bowman, the wisdom of these moms is being crafted into a unique book, The Three Melissas’ Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness (Making Bad a Little Better).
It’s written to parents, filled with hard-earned knowledge that no one teaches when you lose your housing. These three Melissas didn’t hold back when Diana and I interviewed them. They spoke of the horrors, the pitfalls, and the kindnesses that they encountered.
I’ll be writing more about this tremendous project as time goes on. We anticipate the book will be ready for release around Mother’s Day, 2024. The Charles Bruce Foundation is the publisher. Proceeds from the book will benefit our threesome of Melissas.
If it’s true that “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” we should be able to generate significant fury from the moms whose basic human needs for their families have been disregarded.
What can you do?
- Wise up about the invisible form of homelessness — that which impacts families the most. (HEAR US has bunches of free short videos and a slew of insightful books.)
- Get involved locally, doing whatever you’re best able to do to help families survive homelessness. The Charlie Book: 60 Ways to Help Homeless Kids (HEAR US Inc.) is a good place to start.
- Stop those engaged in unenlightened chatter, clueless and judgmental. Enlighten them.
- Use your vote wisely. Talking to candidates about this mostly obscure topic will be telling. If they don’t seem to care, find another.
- Spread the word about the Three Melissas Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness (Making Bad a Little Better).
These three Moms named Melissa crossed my HEAR US path as I spent the past 19 years living in a van chronicling family homelessness across the backroads of the U.S. They have agreed to share a collection of practical suggestions for the millions of families in the same straits, an unheard of homelessness survival guide.
