On October 7, 1984, in the seventh month of her pregnancy, Crystal Taylor gave birth to a son. Because Crystal's mother didn't have her own apartment, Crystal had been living temporarily with the baby's father and his parents. But what concerned the hospital case worker was Crystal herself. According to law, fourteen-year-old Crystal was too young to be discharged from the hospital on her own. Both mother and baby would have to be placed in foster care.
There are nearly half a million foster children in the United States. The emotional consequences of foster care - of being moved from one home to another, from foster family to institution and back - on any child are unpredictable. Life For Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair charts a terrifying legacy of institutional abuse and neglect, shows the damage that has been inflicted on three generations of one inner-city family, and paints a haunting portrait of children growing up without childhood.
Susan Sheehan has written an astonishing and harrowing account of the consequences of a mother's homelessness and drug addiction on her child and grandchild.