For the past four episodes, we've been building a foundation. We've explored what narratives are, how they work, and why they matter. We've heard how dominant narratives limit our ability to see families clearly and respond to them compassionately. Today, we're shifting from the conceptual to the personal. Because dominant narratives don't just exist in the abstract. They don't just live in policy briefs or academic journals. They manifest in people's lives. In doctor's offices. In school meetings. In a mandated reporters’ decision about whether to call CPS or reach out with support. They shape who gets to tell their story and whose story gets told for them. Who is seen as an overloaded parent who needs support, and who is labeled as a risk. Who is offered a helping hand, and who has their children taken away. Today, you'll hear from people who have lived inside these narratives. People who have felt the weight of them. People who have fought to reclaim their truth. This is Episode 5: How Dominant Narratives Manifest for Individuals, Families, and Communities.
How Dominant Narratives Manifest for Individuals, Families, and Communities
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
00:00–00:57 – Valerie Frost - "I don't really have anything… everything that I have can be taken from me." She reflects on how systems involvement taught her that narrative is the only thing that cannot be stripped away.
00:57–04:51 – Luke Waldo - Luke recaps the season's arc from exploring what narratives are, to how dominant narratives limit our ability to see families clearly. He introduces this episode's shift from the conceptual to the personal; exploring how these narratives actually manifest in the lives of individuals and communities.
04:51–05:16 – Media Clips - News clips establish the scope of the child welfare system underscoring how systemic the infrastructure of surveillance and intervention is.
05:16–05:53 – Luke Waldo - Luke introduces Valerie Frost.
05:53–07:37 – Valerie Frost - Valerie powerfully contrasts two narratives of her experience: the system's narrative and her own truth. She articulates how dominant narratives are shaped by exclusion and power, not context; and how that power flows directly into how programs, schools, and services are designed.
07:37–08:19 – Luke Waldo - Luke unpacks dominant narratives as not just a story, but a shortcut. He introduces Claudia Rowe.
08:19–08:48 – Claudia Rowe - Claudia shares that virtually all families in the child welfare system are low-income. Affluent families are largely invisible to CPS.
08:48–08:59 – Prudence Beidler Carr - Prudence quotes Joyce McMillan with a piercing truth.
08:59–09:36 – Luke Waldo - Luke connects this to Prudence's argument from the prior episode that the child welfare system was deliberately designed to target and separate certain families. He introduces Dr. Pegah Faed.
09:36–11:12 – Dr. Pegah Faed - Dr. Faed presents the current system where 87% of calls to CPS in California are not substantiated. The framework of mandated reporting was never designed to address unmet family needs; yet it has become an overused doorway.
11:12–12:35 – Luke Waldo - Luke notes that Wisconsin's numbers mirror California's. He challenges listeners with an analogy. Would you take a medication that failed you 87% of the time?
12:35–14:12 – Valerie Frost - Valerie describes a telling moment where a school-based family support worker concluded that families didn’t need clothing donations.
14:12–14:48 – Luke Waldo - Luke draws out the key implication where the narrative that overloaded parents are failing parents doesn't just shape how systems see families; it forces professionals who signed up to help into a posture of suspicion.
14:48–15:24 – Tori Brasher Weathers - Tori points to a striking gap in how professionals engage families. The question "What do you need to be well?" is rarely asked.
15:24–16:01 – Luke Waldo - Luke connects this to Tshaka Barrows' metaphor from Episode 3.
16:01–16:57 – Claudia Rowe - Claudia shares a disturbing data point: a child welfare researcher sent her a message suggesting some children are "doomed from birth".
16:57–18:14 – Luke Waldo - Luke names what Claudia's story represents: fatalism, one of the dominant mental models explored this season. He then sets up Valerie's analysis of invisible labor and the Time Tax, introduced by journalist Annie Lowrey.
18:14–18:34 – Media Clips: The Time Tax - Annie Lowrey's concept of the "time tax"; the administrative burden shifted from organizations onto ordinary people.
18:34–21:54 – Luke Waldo and Valerie Frost - In one of the episode's most detailed and resonant segments, Valerie walks through the exhausting logistics of survival under poverty.
21:54–22:24 – Luke Waldo - Luke draws out the exposure paradox.
22:24–23:55 – Valerie Frost - Valerie examines risk assessment checklists in child welfare. What if those same flags were reframed as opportunities to build community and expand support?
23:55–24:41 – Luke Waldo - This invisibility and exhaustion is not unique to Kentucky or Valerie's story. He transitions to Milwaukee and introduces Emerald Mills Williams, founder of Diverse Dining.
24:41–25:35 – Emerald Mills Williams - Emerald shares why she left a nearly 20-year career in public health. She traces a root cause: Milwaukee's designation as one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Her theory, that the inability of people to gather across differences and have real conversations was driving poor public health outcomes; led her to found Diverse Dining.
26:28–26:49 – Luke Waldo - Luke introduces Shary Tran, co-founder of ElevAsian.
26:49–28:26 – Shary Tran - Shary identifies three persistent harmful narratives that follow the AAPI community:
28:26–28:55 – Luke Waldo - When we can only see people through the lens of a harmful narrative, we lose the ability to support them or build the communities we say we want.
28:55–29:24 – Valerie Frost - Valerie closes with a reflection on her own impact.
29:24–32:14 – Luke Waldo - Luke summarizes the episode's three central truths:
Luke previews the next episode: a deeper conversation with Claudia Rowe about how media shapes and is shaped by narratives around child welfare, and what happens when journalists become partners in this work.
Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Valerie Frost 00:00
You know, it's really humbling to have systems involvement in that way. That's really shocking, because I now know for the rest of my life that I don't I don't really have anything. I don't have anything. Everything that I have in my life can be taken away from me. All my money can be taken. My house can be taken. My car can be taken. Right now, on this call, CPS could come knock on my door. They could go pick my kids up from the school. They could do it any day. I have nothing, but, you know, I will never, ever give my truth, because that is the only thing that I have, and narrative allows me to keep the truth.
Luke Waldo 00:57
Welcome to season 4 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore how stories and narratives shape what we believe and how we act, and how we might tell different stories that change the narrative so that all children and families can thrive.
Hey everyone, this is Luke Waldo, your host for this podcast series and the Director of Program Design and Community Engagement for the Institute for Child and Family Well-being, our partnership between Children’s Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare.
For the past four episodes, we've been building a foundation. We've explored what narratives are, how they work, and why they matter. We've learned from Jess Moyer at Frameworks Institute that narratives are patterns in discourse, patterns that shape how we think collectively about children, families, and our shared responsibility.
We've heard how dominant narratives like individualism, "care matters most," unfit parents and unsuitable homes limit our ability to see families clearly and respond to them compassionately.
As Prudence shared so powerfully in our last episode, these harmful narratives have been used to build systems that target and marginalize certain people and families. This, in turn, deepens the roots and entrenches these narratives into our cultural mental models.
Today, we're shifting from the conceptual to the personal.
Because dominant narratives don't just exist in the abstract. They don't just live in policy briefs or academic journals. They manifest in people's lives. In doctor's offices. In school meetings. In a mandated reporters’ decision about whether to call CPS or reach out with support.
They shape who gets to tell their story and whose story gets told for them. Who is seen as an overloaded parent who needs support, and who is labeled as a risk. Who is offered a helping hand, and who has their children taken away.
[SOUND: A door closing, echoing]
Today, you'll hear from people who have lived inside these narratives. People who have felt the weight of them. People who have fought to reclaim their truth.
And while this podcast series is focused on children and families impacted by the child welfare system, you may have already noticed that this season is widening its lens to see how narratives impact all of us and how we perpetuate or challenge narratives. So you will hear stories today about how dominant narratives lead to families being treated with suspicion and reported to child welfare, and you will also hear about how other dominant narratives have led to deeply-rooted segregation and marginalization that have made certain people and communities invisible or targets.
You'll hear from Valerie Frost, a mother who navigated Kentucky's child welfare system and discovered that the only thing that couldn't be taken from her was her truth.
You'll hear from Dr. Pegah Faed, CEO of Safe and Sound in San Francisco, who is working to transform a system built on suspicion into one centered on support.
From Tori Brasher Weathers from the Institute for Family in North Carolina, who is using storytelling and data to change how we see families.
From journalist Claudia Rowe, whose book Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care became a National Book Awards finalist.
And from community leaders like Emerald Mills Williams and Shary Tran who are disrupting harmful narratives in my home Milwaukee, Wisconsin through breaking bread together, representation, and the power of deeply personal storytelling.
This is Episode 5: How Dominant Narratives Manifest for Individuals, Families, and Communities.
Let's start with a fundamental question: When a family comes to the attention of the child welfare system, who gets to tell their story?
Media Clip 1 04:51
Child protective services received over 24,000 reports of abuse and neglect this past year, that's a lot, and now they're zeroing in on 95 cases handled by one of their own.
Media Clip 2 05:07
But it's not just CPS tackling the problem. Police departments from all over the valley will be investigating flagged child abuse and neglect cases.
Luke Waldo 05:16
Valerie Frost knows the answer to that question.
[Typing, papers shuffling, institutional sounds]
She's a parent advocate and systems change leader in Kentucky. Her journey into this work began when she became a mother to premature twins who required significant medical care.
When her son's feeding issues led to involvement with multiple medical systems, Valerie found herself swept into child protective services, not because she had harmed her children, but because she was asking questions. Because her hands were full. Because she appeared, to those in power, to be overwhelmed.
Here's what she learned about who controls the narrative.
Valerie Frost 05:53
We've got two different stories, because now CPS comes right, and CPS wants to paint this picture, that I am a high-risk mother, that I'm vulnerable, I'm overwhelmed, I'm disheveled, I didn't even shower, and they didn't give me a room with a shower. They didn't give me food. I'm asking too many questions. I'm making too many phone calls. I need an intervention. That is what the system wants to say.
Then we have the other. I am a mom of two babies that came home at four pounds. I'm a warrior, like, What do you mean? Who can do that? I pumped breast milk for these kids for almost the two entire two years; nobody had a conversation with me. My water broke at 26 weeks, and I'm a woman, and that's embarrassing. I carried a lot of shame for not being able to carry that pregnancy to term, and then I had an emergency C-section. I mean, so much birthing trauma going on here. My twins were in the NICU for two months.
Nobody talked to me about any of that stuff. Nobody gave me a pat on the back for raising kids with special needs, for advocating for them, for taking them to appointments while continuing to face systemic failures at every turn. Nobody looked at me that way. Nobody said, Wow, we didn't take notes from her like she's really doing something here.
So, we have these two narratives here, right? And when it comes to these dominant ones, the one that the system gets to hold, those are shaped by exclusion. They're not shaped by context. They're shaped by power, and that power is what carries through into how programs are designed, schools are ran, services are provided, and they're all really just to the dominant people.
Luke Waldo 07:37
Shaped by power. Not by context.
This is what we mean when we talk about dominant narratives. It's not just a story someone tells. It's a shortcut, an often-subconscious idea that is held and re-told by people with the power to make it stick, to write it in case files, to use it to justify intervention.
And here's the thing: this isn't unique to Valerie's experience.
Claudia Rowe is a journalist and National Book Award finalist for her book Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care. She's been writing about the intersection of youth and government policy and intervention for 34 years.
And she'll tell you: the families who end up in the child welfare system are not a random, representative sample.
Claudia Rowe 08:19
Really, the only families in the child welfare system are low-income families. There are virtually no middle-class kids in the foster care or CPS net, right? So it is certain kinds of families that we're demonizing. We're certainly not demonizing affluent families where parents are totally negligent and wildly addicted, but they certainly exist. We don't demonize them, only certain families of certain economic classes and often certain races, right?
Prudence Beidler Carr 08:48
Joyce McMillan, who's based in New York, had said, which I think is a real sort of truth telling, if foster care was a good thing, black children would only get in through affirmative action.
Luke Waldo 08:59
And that, as you know, was ABA Center on Children and The Law Director Prudence Biedler-Carr from last episode reminding us that the child welfare system as we know it was designed to do exactly that, target and separate certain kinds of families.
[SOUND: A gavel, a file cabinet closing]
Dr. Pegah Faed sees this reality in the data. As CEO of Safe and Sound in San Francisco, her organization published a groundbreaking brief in 2022 called Creating a Child and Family Well-Being System, which called for moving from mandated reporting to community supporting.
The data told a story that couldn't be ignored.
Dr. Pegah Faed 09:36
So when we looked closely at what was happening, it became clear that the issue wasn't just that mandated reporting wasn't working as it was intended to. It was that the framework itself that it was built on assumptions that no longer reflect what families are actually needing to be safe and stable and supported.
So we publish a report annually called the economics of child abuse and. And we break down the data by county in California, and so every county has the opportunity to go into this report that's interactive and filter the data accordingly. And in that report, we've consistently seen that something around 87% of calls that come into child protective services are not substantiated, and so that's a huge number when you're talking about if only 13% of them needed the child welfare system, then we are setting up both children and families and the system for failure.
And so when we noticed that families were getting reported, not because they were harmful, but because they were overwhelmed, they were isolated, they lacked access to the things that they needed to cope, whether it was childcare, stable housing, mental health, supports, all of that. And so the only doorway that we've been able to build so far has been this mandated reporting system, but it was never designed to respond to those unmet needs.
Luke Waldo 11:12
In Wisconsin, that number is nearly identical: Eighty-seven percent unsubstantiated.
Think about what that means. Thousands of families, overwhelmed, isolated, lacking access to basic supports, are being reported to a system designed to investigate harm. But 87% of the time it is determined that there is no harm. There is stress. There is need. There is a lack of resources. And we are seeing this across the country, not just California and Wisconsin.
So how does this happen? How have we arrived to a moment where a system intervention only gets it right 13% of the time? Would you go to a training program that only got 13% of its trainees into good jobs? Or take a medication that made you worse or did nothing for you 87% of the time?
Well, in the case at hand, there is a narrative that says: if you're poor, if you're struggling, if your life is messy, you might be harming your child.
That narrative, as Valerie said, is shaped by power. And it has consequences.
So what actually happens when these narratives have taken root? What does it look like when they move from abstract ideas to concrete actions?
Valerie Frost…
Valerie Frost 12:35
So, so I'm in this meeting with someone that works in a school in a family support role, and they say that, you know, I'm supposed to give clothing resources. But these families don't need clothes. They just need to wash the clothes that they have. They keep asking for clothes because they're just they don't wash the clothes they have. And they keep piling up more and more clothes. And then they make some kind this is a little older of a person. These kids these days don't know how to keep house, and to me, I was just, I was really disheartened by this view, because of what you mentioned, because of the executive functioning.
So when, when this person was raising kids? I mean, I don't know the exact generation, but there's so many rules now that you have to, like you have to keep your eyes on your kids at all times, legally, like you have to have proper supervision at all times. And both parents are working now, so you're working all day, and if you don't have the ability to outsource all this extra labor and all these extra responsibilities, and you have all these childhood adverse child experiences that you're bringing with you to reduce your capacity for executive functioning, and then someone looks who's had a whole different reality, and their job is family support, and all they can think is, you're not good enough because you don't put your laundry away. If you're so good at laundry, roll your sleeves up and go show them how to do it. Go help them. Instead of thinking that these are bad parents, why don't you ask yourself, if they want to be where we want them to be, where can they go if we don't even really like them?
Luke Waldo 14:12
That's the question, isn't it? Where can they go?
Because the narrative, the one that says overloaded parents are failing parents, doesn't just shape how systems see families, it puts professionals who, as Prudence and I discussed, signed up to help families, in a position to see families through a lens of suspicion or harm. It shapes what kind of help gets offered. Or whether help gets offered at all.
Tori Brasher Weathers is the Program and Partnership Manager at the Institute for Family in North Carolina. She leads storytelling work that elevates family voices, and she's heard this reality over and over.
Tori Brasher Weathers 14:48
And honestly, some families just have not been asked the question, what do you need to be well? That's another narrative. Like they've been asked like, what do you need right now? Or what are you looking for? Or, you know, sometimes they're asked very closeted questions trying to get a different answer than what the family wants to share. But I've come across some even service providers, who've said, I've never asked a family like, what do they need to be well? I've asked them the questions directly related to the service I provide.
Luke Waldo 15:24
But if we never ask, how do we know what they need to be well?
This is how dominant narratives operate. They limit our imagination. They make it difficult to see the full human being in front of us, the full context of their life. If we only see them in terms of how they fit into our narrow service or system, we are stuck on those tracks Tshaka Barrows talked about that were designed for another time and another context.
And sometimes, those narratives are so deeply embedded that even well-meaning professionals can't see past them.
Claudia Rowe has been hearing these narratives for decades.
Claudia Rowe 16:01
Some of those storylines have not changed all that much. And I am, I am surprised, frankly, that I still encounter them even up to, you know, like last week. And they are along the lines of, there are some kids that are so damaged you can't do anything for them. Literally, a researcher in child welfare wrote that to me within the last two weeks, I was stunned. There are some kids who are never going to be able to do math. There are some kids who will never be able to really comprehend the themes of a complicated novel, and there are some kids that are kind of doomed from birth.
Luke Waldo 16:57
Doomed from birth.
This is fatalism. This is one of the dominant mental models we've explored this season. And it's still here. Still shaping decisions. Still limiting what we believe is possible for children and families.
It reminds me of a story that is told on our team often in which a high-level systems leader once said in front of a group of child and family-serving professionals when discussing whether kids should be placed with family – “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” The signal was clear.
But here's what these narratives miss: the full story.
One of the things dominant narratives like rugged individualism do is make certain kinds of labor invisible. They make certain kinds of stress invisible. They make the grinding, exhausting, relentless work of poverty invisible.
And then they punish people for struggling under that weight.
Valerie Frost wants to make that invisible labor visible. She wants us to understand what it actually takes to survive when you don't have enough money. When you don't have access. When every single basic need requires planning, coordination, physical exertion, and time.
Media Clips 18:14
The contributing editor for The Atlantic, Annie Lowry…
…the problem is, and my partner, Annie Lowry, has like talked about this as the time tax and written about this kind of administrative complexity a lot… makes it so hard to do a levy of paperwork…
Media Clip 18:22
The time tax, aggravation and mental effort imposed on citizens. It's the shifting of the burden of bureaucracy from organizations to ordinary people.
Luke Waldo 18:34
While Journalist Annie Lowrey coined the term "time tax" to describe this reality, Valerie lives it.
Valerie Frost 18:39
With the time tax situation, you're looking at people, you're not asking what these inequities are. You're not understanding. And then you're saying, well, why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you keeping up? Why aren't you good enough? Why don't you do the steps to get to where I am?
Poverty comes with, with taking the time away, like right now if I need groceries, if I can't go on Instacart and go through past purchases, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, down in there. If that's not an option for me, what do I have to do? I need to coupon to be able to buy groceries. If I don't have a car and have to pay someone for a ride to the grocery store or walk to the grocery store and then carry the groceries back if I can't even afford groceries at all, and I have to go to the food pantry and wait and get a number and go stand in the line and get handed whatever, and make sure that I put that on my calendar which days they're only open, Mondays and Thursdays every other week, I have to get there at this time so I can get the first number. If I don't get the first number, I'm going to be stuck there for three hours, and then that's just food.
What about getting your bills paid? What about every single month I have to go to the community office and get help with my electricity? I have to pay my bill down to $50, they only pay the last $50 so I have to figure out how to get it down to $50 they'll pay the last $50. I have to go on the third Tuesday every single month. And again, I have to make an appointment on this day, at this time, pick up this phone, bring these documents.
Christmas is coming up. I can't buy Christmas gifts, so I have to, uh, November 1 look for the Salvation Army tree list. Get into their Angel Tree thing. I mean, these things take up so much time. If I have to cut my own grass or take my trash to the actual trash place that I don't have the service that comes picks it up, you're constantly doing things for very, very basic needs. It's physically tiring.
It's physically tiring to have to walk to the grocery store. And so you're exhausted. You're exhausted, you are overstimulated. Then if you don't have money because you're in poverty. So time comes with poverty. You don't get to pay to outsource things for luxury, and you also don't get to pay for self-care to take the load off. So you're constantly busy, you're constantly tired, you're always behind, and also a lot of people with money may or may not always spend as much time with their kids.
So maybe their kids are going around to these travel sports teams, and maybe they're in Florida with the team at the hotel, and you're home and you're there, you're spending more time with your kids because your kids can't go to all these fancy extracurricular activities. You're spending time with them while you're physically tired, while you're having to stand in lines, while there are always eyes on you, looking at you. You're not in your home, ordering groceries, and nobody sees you.
Luke Waldo 21:54
This is a striking analysis of our daily routines and tasks as parents from Valerie that had me thinking about the risks of exposure. If you're poor, you're always visible, watched, being judged, and what gets labeled as neglect is often just this exhaustion overload, the crushing weight of trying to meet basic needs in a system that makes it hard and time consuming, yet, as we learned from Prudence, the system isn't designed to see opportunities to support, it sees risk.
Valerie Frost 22:24
You know, check, check, check, this person is a risk.
Luke Waldo 22:27
And when there is risk, there is risk management, hoops, verification and assessment, there are checklists.
Valerie Frost 22:35
And when I looked at the checklist, I mean, some of these things are external, things that are completely out of my control, and some of these are just normal life. So I can be very concrete. I am a single mother. That is seen as a risk. And I have children that were born prematurely. That is seen as a risk. I have twins, multiple gestation is seen as a risk.
And to me, I said, these are not risks. You know, if I go to the doctor and they say you're at risk of diabetes, I'm like, oh gosh, do I need to eat some Cheerios and lower my cholesterol today? I mean, it feels imminent. It feels like you have to intervene. It's a charging word to say risk.
These are just opportunities to support me. She's a single mom. Let's build her village. She has kids that were born early. Oh, maybe we can get some providers that have expertise on premature children. And, you know, she has twins again, we'll build her village more then, so I have continued to say that the risk factors is, it's not accurate. It's really setting people up. It's, you know, it’s charging them up, rather than to look at it as an opportunity to provide support, to provide service, to have more empathy.
Luke Waldo 23:55
Have. More. Empathy.
Provide opportunities and support, not the risk of intervention.
This reframe matters because the language we use shapes how we see families, and how we see families shapes how we respond to them.
But this exhaustion, this invisibility, it's not unique to Kentucky or to Valerie's story. It's happening everywhere, in every community where dominant narratives determine who is seen and who is overlooked.
Emerald Mills is a Milwaukee-based business connector and the founder of Diverse Dining, an organization that uses food and breaking bread together to build relationships across differences. She left her career in public health because she felt the needle wasn't moving fast enough. And one of the reasons, she believed, was this.
Emerald Mills Williams 24:41
And just, well, really, my disdain with Milwaukee being one of the most segregated cities in the nation at that time, and by the time I was at Children's, I had almost 20 years of public health experience in and I just felt like as hard as we were working and as passionate as we were that the needle was just not moving fast enough. And that the statistic around us being the most segregated city in the United States had a lot to do with it.
So my theory was that people's ability, or its challenges with being able to gather together and just have real conversations was part of the reason why our public health statistics were what they were, and many other problems or narratives that we often hear associated with Milwaukee.
Luke Waldo 25:35
Let’s recall the history lesson that Prudence gave us last week. The child welfare system was built during the fight to end segregation.
Segregation isn't just about where people live. It's about who gets to tell the story about who. It's about who is seen and who is invisible. Who is understood and who is reduced to a stereotype.
Media Clip 25:55
CNN revealing that 56% of Americans still confirming that they want all illegals out of the country.
Media Clip 26:01
The theory that the COVID pandemic originated from a Chinese lab leak gets a little more traction.
Media Clip 26:06
…Energy says it's reviewed new evidence, even though its assessment this is important was considered low confidence.
Media Clip 26:12
The shooting shook an Asian American community already rattled by a spate of vicious attacks from coast to coast.
Luke Waldo 26:28
Shary Tran is Vice President of Belonging and Workforce Development at Children's Wisconsin and co-founder of ElevAsian, a collective working to elevate the visibility of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in Milwaukee.
She knows about harmful narratives. She knows how they operate, how they divide communities, how they flatten complex human beings into tropes.
Shary Tran 26:49
There are three persistent tropes that follow the Asian American community... one of them is the model minority myth that is really been one that's been pervasive and persistent, which kind of frames Asian Americans as, like the good minority, right? So pitting different minority groups against each other, saying, 'Well, hey, if the Asian Americans could succeed and thrive, why can't other groups do the same thing?' So it created a lot of division.
Another trope that follows our community, which we thought, you know, had passed, but kind of resurged during covid, was the concept of the yellow peril... the Asians, or, you know, quote, unquote yellow at the time, as they were called, are threats to the Western way of life.
The third trope was the perpetual foreigner trope... Asians have been in the United States for centuries... yet still being perceived as, you know, new immigrants to the country, or just not necessarily belonging to the United States, not being accepted or even perceived as truly American.
Luke Waldo 28:26
The perpetual foreigner. These are narratives that harm, narratives that divide, narratives that make it impossible to see people as they actually are. These narratives put people under the microscope, under pressure to behave a certain way, to be accepted, and when we can't see people clearly, when we only see them through the lens of a harmful narrative, we can't support them. We can't connect with them. We can't build the communities we say we want.
Valerie Frost learned this truth in the most personal way possible.
Valerie Frost 28:55
So somebody said, you know, I'm in this meeting, and they keep using your phrase, opportunities for support. And I'm like, see that that is what I do. I tell the truth, I elevate the voices of families like mine, and then I end up shifting narratives, not really by changing minds, but making the truth undeniable and persistent.
Luke Waldo 29:24
Today, we've heard what happens when narratives shaped by power meet lives shaped by circumstance. We've heard three truths that keep emerging:
First: invisibility breeds harm. When certain kinds of labor become invisible, the time tax of poverty, the exhausting work of navigating systems, the daily grind of survival, they get mistaken for failure. For neglect. For risk. And families get punished for being overloaded by conditions that were never in their control.
Second: who tells the story matters as much as the story itself. When systems hold the power to narrate families' lives, those narratives are often shaped by exclusion, not context. By judgment, not understanding. And their truth, the warrior mother, the resourceful parent, the capable human being, gets erased.
Third: these narratives don't stay abstract. They become concrete. They become risk assessments and case files. They become the assumptions of well-meaning professionals who see laziness instead of exhaustion. They become the stereotypes that flatten entire communities into tropes. They become the reason 87% of families reported to child protective services for neglect don't actually need CPS at all, they need support.
The question we're left with is this: if these narratives cause such profound harm, can they be changed?
Can we reimagine our systems to see opportunities instead of risks? To ask "what do you need to be well?" instead of "what's wrong with you?" To center the voices of those who have been silenced?
In the episodes ahead, we'll explore those questions.
Next time, we'll dive deeper with Claudia Rowe about how the media shapes and is shaped by the narratives around child welfare. We'll explore how journalists can be partners in this work, and what happens when they're not.
You've been listening to Overloaded: Understanding Neglect.
Until then, keep asking: Whose story gets told? Who gets to tell it? And what becomes possible when we center the voices of those who have been silenced?
If you enjoyed today's episode, please share with friends, family and colleagues. Also leave us a rating or comment so that we can see your reaction and reach more people. This podcast would not have been possible without the support and talents of Nathan Fink, who is responsible for our technical production. I can't express my gratitude enough to Nathan.
This podcast would not have been possible without the support and talents of Nathan Fink, who is responsible for our technical production. I'm also grateful to my team at the Institute for Child and Family Well-being at Children's Wisconsin, who drive the Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative.
Finally, I would like to thank all of our speakers that you have heard today and throughout the podcast for their partnership, their willingness to share their stories and expertise with me and all of you and their commitment to improving the lives of children and families.
I'm Luke Waldo, your host and executive editor. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.