US: How the Child Welfare System Made Me Prioritize Education Over Myself (Opinion)
Imprint – July 22, 2021
Officials in the child welfare system rave about the 3% of foster youth who age out of foster care who go on to become college graduates – while painfully silencing the experience of the rest. Youth who do not attend postsecondary institutions do not seem worth mentioning outside of the statistics of houselessness, incarceration and unwanted pregnancies. When the experiences of foster youth are acknowledged in mainstream narratives, we are painted in broad strokes and divided into the mythical binary of those who survived and later enter institutions of higher learning and those who did not. The danger is when we ourselves begin to believe the myth and measure ourselves against these dichotomous and untrue stories of who we are allowed to be.
https://imprintnews.org/youth-voice/how-the-child-welfare-system-made-me-prioritize-education-over-myself/57103