All foster parents are required to take a class through the county or their sponsoring agency. It covered a wide range of topics from an overview of the fost-adopt process and parenting techniques to typical scenarios that children “in the system” have gone through. The class was a very positive thing that relieved many of our fears. On the other hand, looking at the big picture left me with a feeling of angst that I haven’t fully come to terms with.
One of the exercises discussed in the class, and also in A Child’s Journey Through Placement was imagining that you are at home with your spouse, who is slightly drunk and watching a football game. Your spouse and your kids aren’t perfect, but you love them and they are your family. Suddenly, some people show up at your door and take you away to a different house with a whole other family. The family’s house is really clean and they are all smiling and welcoming, but it is weird and you really want to go back home to your own family.
This is the first time that it really dawned on me what it means to go and live with complete strangers. In addition to not knowing us, we will likely be so very different from any people that they have known, certainly very different from their parents. They may have no frame of reference in which to place us; if they do it may even be negative. This made me reflect on my own past.
My parents did not have many friends and they didn’t have contact with my godparents from the time that I was about 10. Nonetheless, we had a close, but small, family and I had several friends whose families I was close to. I think that if something had happened to my parents, I would have had familiar places where I would have been well taken care of. So if I had places to go, even with the little amount of “community” that my family had, where does that leave these kids? How ravaged are the communities that these kids are coming from, where there are no family members, no neighbors, no friends of the kids that are able and willing to take them? Where does this kind of background leave the state of the hearts and minds of these children?
This made me feel selfish, that instead of supporting these communities to keep their children, that through the system, I will support their removal. Is it just a band-aid solution to find more stable home placements for the kids? Or, is it breaking the cycle of neglect and abuse that takes place in multiple generations of these families, which in turn will eradicate these wrongdoings. Many studies have shown that it is better for the children to be removed from these negative situations more quickly and more permanently. And ultimately, what is best for the children is best for the future. Right?
What has also been studied is cultural assimilation, which remains very controversial. As far as child development, most studies show that children in a transracial family can do as well as children in a family of their own ethnicity, provided that they are given resources to connect with people and ideas of their own ethnicity. The law has used this to rationalize transracial placements if that is the best for the child. But the flip side of the question is what is best for the community? Seperatists would most certainly argue that the children can only truly maintain the values of their people by living, eating, schooling and communing primarily with those of their same ethnicity. I do not know the details of this, but Native Americans have a different level of control over children that leave the care of others in their nation, which takes that issue to heart.
The county’s philosophy of concurrent planning does a little to remove the conflict from this senario. They expect the foster parents to join in community with the child and support them and stay in their lives, whether they will be adopted or not. This is a tall order for people like us, who don’t see ourselves as foster parents, primarily, but as adoptive parents.
Since we do not have children yet or know who they will be, we do not know what is in store for us as far as contact with family members, friends, communities or institutions that the kids will be a part of before we met them. I do know that we expect our lives and relationships to change based on the needs and desires of our children, which may be very different from ours.
