Imagine a stranger pounding on the door, threatening to take away your children if you don’t let them search your home for evidence that your children are unsafe. Traumatic scenarios like this one are inflicted on some 3.5 million children in the U.S. each year by child protective services, as reported by ProPublica and NBC News in a 2022 investigation. More than 37 percent of children in the U.S. are estimated to experience such a search during their childhoods, according to a 2017 study, including 53 percent of African American children.
Contrary to what these statistics would suggest, abuse is not rampant in U.S. families. Only around 5 percent of CPS investigations see findings of physical or sexual abuse. In fact, the vast majority of the reports triggering these searches were not related to suspected abuse at all but stemmed from alleged neglect. This is a broad category consisting of lack of healthy food, clothing, hygiene, shelter, supervision, or medical care — in other words, the impact of poverty.
