Listening to the Diane Rehm show today gave me confirmation about a dynamic I thought may be racially tinged. Turns out that the number one environmental cause of mental retardation in kids is fetal alcohol syndrome. Not being born to a crack addicted mother...being born to an alcoholic mother. A group of researchers out of Detroit were actually able to do comparison studies between groups of people addicted to alcohol, groups of people addicted to cocaine (who did NOT use alcohol), and I THINK (the show is still on as I type, so I might be getting this wrong) groups of people addicted to both. This method allowed them to tease out the differences between the two groups. Whereas the babies addicted to cocaine had social problems...and responded very quickly (and wrongly) to stimuli, the response rate of the children addicted to alcohol was very slow (in comparison).
Given all the stuff we used to hear about crack babies back in the eighties (when these kids grow up, we're going to need a WHOLE BUNCH OF PRISONS), this finding gives us pause. Do any of you remember some of the draconian policies enacted against women addicted to cocaine (particularly crack) to keep them from having kids?
Do the words FORCED STERILIZATION ring any bells?
While such a policy enacted to alcoholic women would be just as problematic, I doubt we have anything to worry about. Soccer moms represent a powerful voting demographic...compared to poor women addicted to crack.