Foster Care is about Family

Foster Care is about Family

Jamie C.

Warning for prospective foster parents: If you imagine foster care and picture cute babies and adorable kids and don’t picture the families connected to them, then you don’t have an accurate picture of foster care.

“Bring me all the kids” is a cute idea, I guess. But it’s not what this is about. Foster care isn’t a babysitting service, and it’s not an adoption service. Each child that comes into your home comes with a web of relational ties, memories, traditions, and connections. Each child comes with a family of their own.

Foster care is about standing in the gap for another family. This family might become part of your own, blurring the lines of “normal” family boundaries, redefining family as you once knew it. Or you may never get to know them at all. But their reality, their existence, their importance will always be there, touching your days, influencing your children. You can’t—and shouldn’t—erase them away. And you shouldn’t step into foster care if you’re not ready to engage with the reality of them.

Foster care is about family. It’s about welcoming a child into your family. It’s about—in one way or another—welcoming another family into your family.

A word to the mamas making their way to church with screaming babies and squirming toddlers and trauma-ing kids and eye-rolling teenagers: What you’re fighting for is worth it. You may barely sing a song, hardly hear a word, not even be able to
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