A Korean boy makes good by overcoming significant childhood disadvantages in Rob Henderson’s new memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. Henderson recounts how he landed a coveted op-ed in The New York Times, graduated from Yale, and earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge. Yet, he writes, “I would swap my position in the top 1 percent of educational attainment to have never been in the top 1 percent of childhood instability.”
My body shook with tears before I finished the preface. What was so unsettling? Twenty-one years ago, my ex-husband had an affair and sought sole custody of our daughters, seeking to use them as bargaining chips in our divorce. I opposed the lawsuit. I knew instinctively that inevitable suffering awaited if he abandoned our family permanently, even though our children had economic privileges Henderson didn’t.
Pain Etched Deep
At 3, Henderson clutched his drug-addicted mother and sobbed. It’s his earliest memory. He has no recollection of the father who abandoned them after his mother became pregnant. In his second memory, he spills chocolate milk. But his abusive mother can’t help. She’s in handcuffs beside him, about to be deported to Seoul. He never sees her again.
Over the next five years, he’s shuffled between seven foster homes, his only constant being the social worker who ferries him from place to place. He throws a fit the first time she collects him. By the last, he’s resigned. Before third grade, he attends six elementary schools, always
