The ‘luxury beliefs’ that harm vulnerable children

Now that everyone insists that the oppressed must be lifted up – or platformed, if you’re that way inclined: why does no one in the West give a second thought to the most obviously powerless group: kids in care – children who’ve been abandoned by or taken from their parents? An astonishing amount of kids brought up in care end up in jail or homeless or preyed on by gangs. Why no Facebook filter for them? Why no flag-in-bio solidarity?

Opposite me now in a café in Cambridge is a man who might have answers. Rob Henderson grew up in institutions and foster homes in California – ‘I think it was like 16 different houses in total.’ He escaped the usual fate of kids in care via the air force and university and now, at 33, he has written a book, Troubled, about his life and his thoughts. Troubled does not reflect very well on human nature.

Henderson says: ‘I think somehow expressing concern for disadvantaged kids became coded as conservative or right-wing.