Justice
Poverty Hurts Kids More Than Being Born to Moms on Cocaine
The conclusion to a long-running study of "crack babies" in Philadelphia.
In 1989, nearly one in six babies born in Philadelphia city hospitals had mothers who tested positive for cocaine.
At the time, Susan FitzGerald writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer, screaming headlines warned that pretty terrible things would happen to those babies: They'd grow up with lower IQs, with faulty brain development, with permanent disabilities. They'd inevitably become addicts themselves. This was in the midst of the crack epidemic, when it looked as if an entire generation of children in some cities might be born with problems that would follow them for life.