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The very first time I talked to Erin on the phone, she was petrified that "these people were trying to take" her baby. These people = us. We assured her that we were NOT trying to take her -- or anybody's -- baby from her. We didn't get into foster care with adoption as the end game.
I'm sure that is a common fear of shared by EVERY parent who has a child in foster care. It is a common misconception that all foster parents are in it to adopt. When Darryl and I initially went through the foster care classes, we were one of the very few couples that were adamant that we did NOT want to adopt.
That being said, I've always made it clear to everyone, The Agency included, that if a child was placed with us for an extended period of time, say over a year, then at that point, we would be open for adoption. At that point, how could you NOT be attached? Heck, I had gotten attached to Baby O after ten days! (granted, I never thought we would adopt him)
I might have said this before, but I think the foster parents who get their hearts broken the worst is those who want to adopt. I actually researched it (the most recent governmental reports are from 2017-2018).
Of the estimated 247,631 children who exited foster care during 2017:
- 49 percent were reunited with parent(s) or primary caretaker(s).
- 24 percent were adopted.
- 8 percent were emancipated.
- 10 percent went to live with a guardian.
- 7 percent went to live with another relative.
- 2 percent had other outcomes.
The VAST majority of kids in foster care are there for under a year and only 24% are adopted (I say "only" for those couples who enter foster care with the primary goal to adopt). Those are pretty shitty odds if that was your goal.
The reality is that most foster kids go home, whether "home" is to parents or other relatives. Most people in the world do not know what foster care is. They assume that it is a path to adoption. It is not.
As of September 2018, 442, 995 children were in foster care in the United States, but only 69,525 were eligible to be adopted because all living parents' parental rights had been terminated. That is just a hair over 15%.
I went into foster care never wanting to want one of those kids in the 15%. Darryl doesn't have biological children of his own, and when we got married, we talked for a long time about it (we were 38 and 39 when we got married, plus I was already diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Having biological children was never an option for us, and he made it very clear that he was not interested in adopting. I knew this when we got married.)
One of the very few rights you have as a foster parent is that, on the snowball's chance in hell's occurrence, if your foster child IS freed for adoption, you are given the first chance to adopt. If you are not interested, then the child is placed with another family whose goal is to adopt. Makes sense to me.
About two weeks after we got Bram, I was talking to Darryl on the phone in my car (legally, on the BlueTooth, I swear) and out of nowhere, he said: "The only options for Bram is to either go home to Erin and Ibro, get adopted by a relative, or get adopted by us. There is no way he will go to a stranger!"
I almost literally had a car accident.
This man who swore repeatedly that he never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever wanted children, who, when I pointed out older couples who gave birth or adopted would reply with "good for them," was actually thinking about adoption??? Holy shit!
(Let me be clear: He was NOT saying that he wanted Erin and Ibro to fail. He wanted Bram to go home with his family. He was saying that he didn't want Bram to ever end up with a stranger!)
Still, for the first time in this foster care journey, I seriously started thinking that maybe I was one of those people who were going to get their hearts broken... repeatedly.
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