Extreme poverty
Family preservation stems back to the poor laws of the late-eighteen and early-nineteen hundreds. Child-Saving was the theme of the era. With the new labor laws for children, the emphasis on the newly developed child psychology and the fear of family disintegration, social workers put a greater emphasis on the child, who was no longer considered just a smaller adult. Before this, children were systematically taken out of homes if parents did not make enough income to support them. "Extreme poverty itself, many of the leading authorities of the time had argued, was reason enough to break up a family."