As a first time foster parent, I have a silly non-recommendation to make. It’s something that I have noticed while serving my former foster daughter. For anyone currently caring for a baby in the foster care system or even considering it (do it!), I think you’ll appreciate this. Note that this is not necessarily applicable for foster parents with teenagers in their care.
The key to what I want to share has to do with that word “former” I used to describe my foster daughter. While she continues to be a ray of sunshine (among many) in my life, she no longer stays at my house every single night, and we are no longer charged with her, legally. Her auntie has taken that mantle. As such, I cannot technically call her my “foster daughter” anymore since I am not actively serving as her foster parent.
Despite the legal designations, I must pause to share that ever since entering the foster care system, her birth mother has been right there for her daughter. No matter what anyone else was saying about her baby, she was the only one she saw as responsible for the baby’s ultimate care. She is an amazing mother. She works, takes the bus to get her daughter from daycare, feeds her and puts her to bed at her sister’s house and then goes home to sleep, waking up at 4AM to get ready for the whole thing again. It seems nuts that she is not allowed to just keep her daughter with her, full time.
This story about a program in LA made me feel better about the fact that when this mother of our foster daughter informed us that she was homeless, we couldn’t help but bring her into our home. This was soon after her daughter, our “foster daughter” became our “former foster daughter.” Given that her mother was now living with us, we began to feel like “foster grandparents” to the baby, somewhat unexpectedly, especially when we are all together at home, in the routine schedule of real life.
As the above linked NPR story suggests, more people of privilege could have the opportunity to host someone in need of housing. It sounds crazy. And it is. But it is an action that makes a real difference, which is unfortunately rare. As such, the experience returns multiples of the risk we invest to overcome discomfort, in favor of extreme generosity. We feel dumb lucky to have discovered this opportunity. Adoption led to foster care which led to this. It was 1AM, we were sleeping on sleeping bags in our empty apartment and our phones rang off the hook. I kept sleeping like a jerk, but my wife luckily answered the phone. A few minutes later was her first night with us which continues today. We did Chanukah together and now we are doing Christmas. The courts are giving us more and more days all together. Obviously we were lucky to be matched with a birthmother who was not doing drugs or otherwise acting in any very destructive way which allowed us to build trust sufficient to invite her into our home to live.
In foster care training, the mantra is that we are supposed to get the child back to her own family’s care. This is not adoption, we are told over and over before our first placement. Many foster care cases should not involve the removal of the child. We are told this in training multiple times as well. It’s a sad fact. Mostly, the cases represent basic needs of people in poverty like childcare, food security, housing. Spending resources to keep a child from a parent that we all agree is where the child ought to be, is unfortunate. But the lawyers and the courts decide. The most powerful people in this process never get to spend any time living as a family with the people who they are presiding over — they have all the power but none of the unmediated data.
I get why the courts have an impetus is to remove a child in error rather than the other way around, leaving a child inadvertently in danger. I certainly have seen how the foster care system has greatly improved as compared to stories I hear about the 1980’s, even. The mandatory videos we watch crafted by New York State based on Obama administration laws encouraging a “normative” childhood experience for foster children, make it clear that as foster parents we are in charge. Today’s foster parent enjoys more leeway than ever before. And that is great. Now we need more participation by privileged society.
As unwitting grandparents, our role is much more directly aligned with the foster care directive of returning my grandchild to my [implied] daughter. We talked about this with our new, 22 year old “foster daughter” which was awkward at first. Just weeks before we had a two-year-old foster daughter. It’s a big change for all involved to now have a twenty-two-year-old foster daughter and a two-year-old foster granddaughter. We even learned that we could officially apply to be her foster parents until she turns 24! That would help get a little bit more money into her hands while she lives with us, and it would make it official for us as foster grandparents.
Regardless of any official status, this new arrangement tickled us all and we laughed about it. When she called my wife “mom” a few times it was emotional because she meant it a little bit. The same night as I’m publishing this story I introduced her as my foster daughter at a notary. She responded with a warm smile.
She will soon get public housing and move on with her life, reunited with her daughter, this whole mess behind them. I have no illusions about how much time they will opt to spend with their Jewish-Japanese foster grandparents at that point. But I hope we will stay in touch enough to know that they are doing well. Given that we live in the same neighborhood we have a decent chance of that much.
The sudden experience of becoming a grandparent clearly resolved a lot of the tensions that had existed for me as a foster parent. Given that we had previously tried to adopt and so we would gladly adopt another, while we also supported this mother to be reunited with her child (our foster child). An inherent conflict baked into our hearts from the start. I didn’t understand how to be a parent and let someone else do it at the same time for the same child given how different we were. We visited together three days per week. It was confusing. Is she my daughter or her daughter? What do I do when I see her giving the baby sugary drinks that I do not approve of? If not mine, how am I supposed to treat her like she is my own? Doesn’t she deserve that while she is in my care?
Now as a grandparent, supporting my new foster daughter to raise our foster granddaughter, it all makes a lot more sense. With our roles clearer, our time and attention are more impactful, hopefully improving the lives of these two new family members.
For anyone embarking on the journey as foster parents of an infant, I encourage you to think of yourselves as grandparents from the start. Your implied foster child may not be on board with seeing you as a new parent, but it’s still much simpler as a mental model than being co-parents.
Referring to ourselves as foster grandparents from the start would have helped me think about my role as a foster parent less. Admittedly, I may not have jumped at the opportunity to be a grandparent at such a young age; had foster care been presented as grand parenting rather than parenting. And the foster care system needs more people to step in and care for children, so this is likely a terrible idea in practice.
On the other hand, by doing so we recognize our inherent commitment to care for the birth parents, as much as they will allow. Anything less would violate our commitment as foster parents to reunite the two and would be an incomplete effort to serve the foster child in our charge.
Once we got over the shock of thinking of ourselves as grandparents, the experience has been amazing. Being a grandparent is an amazing role that many people don’t earn the right to enjoy until they are much farther along in life. And it turns out we are actually older than the baby’s actual grandparents who are barely forty years old!
