The innovative comedic genius, Sid Caesar, died last Wednesday. The following day, Ralph Waite, the stage actor who became widely known for his role as the family patriarch on the 1970's TV series, "The Waltons," died. Their respective New York Times obituaries brought to mind one of the major aspects of child welfare practice that is in dire need of change, as I have been writing in these blog articles.
Waite did not begin his career as an actor. Starting, after college, as a social worker in Westchester County but "tiring of the county bureaucracy" he next attended Yale Divinity School and then became an ordained Presbyterian minister. When he became "upset with what he saw as hypocrisy in the church" he moved on to editing religious books at Harper & Row. His interest in editing soon waned and at a friend's suggestion he tried acting. '"I was in my 30's and I had never acted before," he told The Boston Globe in 1974. "But I figured I had nothing to lose, so I went with him. The first time I just listened. The second time I played a scene. The third time I took the bit in my teeth, and I loved it. I felt alive for the first time since I can't remember when."'
Sid Caesar's pioneering, 1950's Your Show of Shows ran simultaneously with his alcohol and pill addiction. Caesar "was distraught and filled with self-hate, tormented by guilt because he did not think he deserved the acclaim he was receiving." He experienced some ups and downs after he went off the air in the late fifties; but in 1978 "he had hit bottom." "Incapacitated by his addictions and neuroses, barely able to get out of bed, he underwent intensive psychotherapy and medical treatment. He found salvation and sanity, he later said, in a form of Jungian self-therapy: recording improvised dialogues each day between himself as Sid, a wise father, and Sidney, his wayward son, whom the father teaches to become a restrained, confident adult. In the 1980's Mr. Caesar acquired a new addiction: healthful living. He developed a lean, youthful physique by avoiding fat, salt and sugar and by strenuously working out at least one hour each morning." '"Now, instead of knocking life down, tearing it apart, I graciously accept life, he said."'
Ralph Waite tried various kinds of work until finally finding the field that gave him immense satisfaction, so much so that he described this discovery as affecting the very essence of his life. His vocational pursuit exemplifies, more or less, the expectations of most middle-class Americans in their efforts to build a satisfying life.
Though plagued by serious addictions and neuroses over a period of many years, Sid Caesar was ultimately successful in turning his life around. Whatever therapeutic techniques he had used to do so were no doubt effective because he had previously found satisfaction in his work and also continued to acquire new areas of significant interest. Were his life overwhelmingly a series of negative experiences, with little or no chance to engage in the educational, cultural and vocational pursuits of the majority of citizens, with the resulting hopelessness experienced by the multitudes of America's impoverished population, his therapeutic efforts probably would have been devoid of any anchorage.
And that's just how things are for the majority of families who become involved with the child welfare system. Their lives are usually dominated by hopelessness. Attempts, and certainly mandated and coercive ones, at isolated behavioral change will usually be unsuccessful. Life can already be a tremendous burden for many of these families and the forced and intrusive demands of child welfare caseworkers will usually be met not only with opposition and often anger, but also with a sense of great dismay. How will the various child welfare mandated therapeutic interventions help them turn their lives, and their children's lives, around, they say to themselves. Go to parent education classes, for what, they may think to themselves as they continue to see no better future life for their children then the sad and hopeless existence they have long been used to.
A new and different approach to working with families that patiently helps parents explore and identify ways for them to engage in educational, cultural and vocational pursuits in order to build satisfying lives will likely see a much improved rate of better parenting. Parents will then see the purpose in better parenting and will be motivated in that direction.
In her book, Fighting For Life, Sara Josephine Baker, MD, the first director of New York City's Bureau of Child Hygiene and whose pioneering work with poor mothers and children in the first part of the twentieth century was responsible for saving tens of thousands of lives, wrote, "The chief point of leverage is always the fact that, although the average mother will go a long way with you, she does so only when she is convinced in her own mind that whatever is proposed will be good for her child." Parents engaged with the child welfare system and who are helped to find real opportunities for change will likely see why better parenting is "good for [their] child."
As in most situations there are exceptions and there may be parents who will respond to current child welfare interventions. But in the majority of situations that will not be the case, as decades of child welfare practice can attest.
l
Waite did not begin his career as an actor. Starting, after college, as a social worker in Westchester County but "tiring of the county bureaucracy" he next attended Yale Divinity School and then became an ordained Presbyterian minister. When he became "upset with what he saw as hypocrisy in the church" he moved on to editing religious books at Harper & Row. His interest in editing soon waned and at a friend's suggestion he tried acting. '"I was in my 30's and I had never acted before," he told The Boston Globe in 1974. "But I figured I had nothing to lose, so I went with him. The first time I just listened. The second time I played a scene. The third time I took the bit in my teeth, and I loved it. I felt alive for the first time since I can't remember when."'
Sid Caesar's pioneering, 1950's Your Show of Shows ran simultaneously with his alcohol and pill addiction. Caesar "was distraught and filled with self-hate, tormented by guilt because he did not think he deserved the acclaim he was receiving." He experienced some ups and downs after he went off the air in the late fifties; but in 1978 "he had hit bottom." "Incapacitated by his addictions and neuroses, barely able to get out of bed, he underwent intensive psychotherapy and medical treatment. He found salvation and sanity, he later said, in a form of Jungian self-therapy: recording improvised dialogues each day between himself as Sid, a wise father, and Sidney, his wayward son, whom the father teaches to become a restrained, confident adult. In the 1980's Mr. Caesar acquired a new addiction: healthful living. He developed a lean, youthful physique by avoiding fat, salt and sugar and by strenuously working out at least one hour each morning." '"Now, instead of knocking life down, tearing it apart, I graciously accept life, he said."'
Ralph Waite tried various kinds of work until finally finding the field that gave him immense satisfaction, so much so that he described this discovery as affecting the very essence of his life. His vocational pursuit exemplifies, more or less, the expectations of most middle-class Americans in their efforts to build a satisfying life.
Though plagued by serious addictions and neuroses over a period of many years, Sid Caesar was ultimately successful in turning his life around. Whatever therapeutic techniques he had used to do so were no doubt effective because he had previously found satisfaction in his work and also continued to acquire new areas of significant interest. Were his life overwhelmingly a series of negative experiences, with little or no chance to engage in the educational, cultural and vocational pursuits of the majority of citizens, with the resulting hopelessness experienced by the multitudes of America's impoverished population, his therapeutic efforts probably would have been devoid of any anchorage.
And that's just how things are for the majority of families who become involved with the child welfare system. Their lives are usually dominated by hopelessness. Attempts, and certainly mandated and coercive ones, at isolated behavioral change will usually be unsuccessful. Life can already be a tremendous burden for many of these families and the forced and intrusive demands of child welfare caseworkers will usually be met not only with opposition and often anger, but also with a sense of great dismay. How will the various child welfare mandated therapeutic interventions help them turn their lives, and their children's lives, around, they say to themselves. Go to parent education classes, for what, they may think to themselves as they continue to see no better future life for their children then the sad and hopeless existence they have long been used to.
A new and different approach to working with families that patiently helps parents explore and identify ways for them to engage in educational, cultural and vocational pursuits in order to build satisfying lives will likely see a much improved rate of better parenting. Parents will then see the purpose in better parenting and will be motivated in that direction.
In her book, Fighting For Life, Sara Josephine Baker, MD, the first director of New York City's Bureau of Child Hygiene and whose pioneering work with poor mothers and children in the first part of the twentieth century was responsible for saving tens of thousands of lives, wrote, "The chief point of leverage is always the fact that, although the average mother will go a long way with you, she does so only when she is convinced in her own mind that whatever is proposed will be good for her child." Parents engaged with the child welfare system and who are helped to find real opportunities for change will likely see why better parenting is "good for [their] child."
As in most situations there are exceptions and there may be parents who will respond to current child welfare interventions. But in the majority of situations that will not be the case, as decades of child welfare practice can attest.
l