Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class

This is perhaps why a 2019 survey found that less than half of Americans without a college degree want to legalize drugs, but more than 60 percent of Americans with a bachelor’s degree or higher are in favor of drug legalization.14 Drugs are frequently considered a recreational pastime for the rich, but for the poor they are often a gateway to furt

each time a person gets pulled over by a police officer for drinking and driving, there are at least eighty other instances that the person decided to drink and drive but didn’t get caught.

Each time I moved, each time another adult let me down, and each time I let myself down, it was like tossing a Mentos into a Coke, sealing it, and believing everything would be fine.

That’s the practical purpose of memory—to avoid making future mistakes.

while 85 percent of children born to upper-class families are raised by both of their birth parents, only 30 percent of those born to working-class families are.

Unfortunately, like fashion trends that debut on the runway and make it into JCPenney three years later, the luxury beliefs of the upper class often trickle down and are adopted by people lower on the food chain, which means many of these beliefs end up causing social harm.

I’ve come to believe that upward social mobility shouldn’t be our priority as a society. Rather, upward mobility should be the side effect of far more important things: family, stability, and emotional security for children. Even if upward mobility were the primary goal, a safe and secure family would help achieve it more than anything else. Conven

You can commit a lot of crimes before finally getting caught. You can do a lot of drugs before they start to take over your life. You can have a lot of hookups before confronting the consequences of pregnancy. For many young people, the gap between impulsive and unwise decisions and the consequences of those decisions is large.

Adults forget how they processed time as children. When you’re a grown-up, time flies by. As a kid, the period between the beginning of a school year in September and winter break in December feels endless. I had lived in foster homes for just shy of five years, but it felt like twenty.