Word: mothers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...home made all the difference for Michael Mazzafro, now 17. The son of an alcoholic, drug-abusing mother, he spent six years shuttling back and forth between foster care and his mother's home. At last he was adopted by a Pennsylvania couple, but his behavior soon proved too much for them. While they made arrangements to terminate the adoption, he was stashed in a hospital for more than a year. That's where he was when Joe Mazzafro, a Philadelphia bachelor now 39, took...
...Jimmy Hibbard is lucky. Though his mother freely consumed prescription and street drugs during pregnancy, her drug abuse probably did not extend to crack. Even so, when Rick and Mary Hibbard brought him into their home in Long Beach, Calif., he was a nine-month-old veteran of pneumonia, bronchitis and asthma, so white from anemia he was "almost iridescent," recalls Rick. Now eight, Jimmy still has trouble with some motor skills. But he has demonstrated above-average reading ability...
...suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome as well as prenatal exposure to angel dust and probably cocaine. For a long time she was so sensitive to tactile stimulation that it made her hysterical to walk on carpeting, grass or sand. She has been diagnosed as mildly retarded. With a good mother's militant optimism, Mary says the Hibbard house will make the difference. "All kids need structure," she explains. "But special-needs kids need it more...
...become a kind of indeterminate sentence. Only about half of all foster children return home; many of the rest are suspended in a legal limbo by parents who make little effort to regain their children but refuse to relinquish them fully. Although federal law mandates that a child whose mother shows no inclination to plan for his or her future within 18 months should be made available for adoption, an absentee parent can thwart such attempts by just minimal contact during those 18 months. Result: of the estimated 276,000 children in foster care in 1986, the last year...
Despite the broedertwis (Afrikaans for a brotherly falling out), F.W., 53, and Willem, 61, retain great affection for each other. They see each other once a month, often at the Pretoria home of their 86-year-old mother, and speak on the phone weekly. Two days before last month's election, F.W. asked, "Don't you want to consider voting Nationalist and making it public?" Recalls Willem: "Then he said, 'That's only a joke between us.' He tries to persuade me, and I try to persuade him. We agree to disagree...