Opinion Video In a 2017 Senate hearing, the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam famously argued, “Rich kids and poor kids now grow up in separate Americas.” Rob Henderson knows this firsthand. His mother was addicted to drugs; he never knew his father. He grew up shuttling among foster homes, where he started drinking beer around age 5 and smoking marijuana at age 9. At age 17 he watched a drunk friend kick a dog off a cliff and knew he had to escape. He enlisted in the Air Force.