Child Welfare and Perinatal Regulation: A Study of National and State Policy Development.

Child protective services are the primary agencies authorized by federal law and fortytwo state policies to intervene with drug and alcohol affected new mothers. While much of the available literature links this issue to criminalization of poor women in an increasingly punitive American welfare state, this focus overlooks the historical and institutional factors that link fetal protectionism to child protectionism. This paper draws on archival, legal, and survey data to describe the transformation of child welfare services from an institution focused primarily on destitute, disabled, and delinquent children to one focused on child abuse and neglect, including substance-exposed infants. Using national and California-specific data, this paper shows how during the 1950s and 1960s, the expansion of child welfare agencies' organizational capacity converged with a path-dependent policy feedback process, thus enabling the regulatory legitimacy that underpins child welfare agencies' expanded authority over American families. During the same period, efforts to criminalize substance-dependent pregnant and postpartum women consistently failed, and state legislatures began to view child welfare agencies as a useful protective framing for expanding regulation of pregnant and postpartum women. Through a multi-method explanation of these legal and historical changes, this paper reveals how the institutionalization of child welfare as a protective force for children shaped the development of American perinatal protective policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]