Vol. 6, No. 2• May 2002

Fostering Relationships

Overcoming Birth Parent Prejudice for the Best Interest of the Child

By Julie Jarrell Bailey

When I was a child growing up in the 1950s and 60s, life was very different from how it is today. Childhood dreams of family were reflected images from what we saw in the movies and on television—a Cinderella world, or the Nelson family of Ozzie and Harriet. Post-World War II was an age of innocence that focused on family values.

Orphanages were still in existence, but nobody in my school even knew where one was located. We had never heard the term “foster care,” or “foster child,” and in our young minds the only reason a child could possibly live in an orphanage was because her parents had been tragically killed in an automobile accident. Our reality was based on a complete lack of knowledge or experience in areas of nontraditional family life.

Orphanages and foster care were not openly discussed and so children of the times were left to create their own images based on fantasy and speculation. None of the kids I knew could ever have believed that a child needed to be placed into foster care for his or her own protection. Until the Vietnam War, the world seemed like a generally safe place in which to reside.

It really wasn’t until the late-1970s that the foster care system became a more openly discussed topic. For my baby-boomer generation, the Vietnam War, anti-war demonstrations, free-love, feminism, and the surfacing culture of drug abuse were all bubble-busters. We went from Leave It To Beaver to sexually transmitted diseases and drug overdoses practically overnight. We all began to view our world differently and had to come face-to-face rather quickly with some of life’s harshest realities.

Until the mid-1970s, the majority of single women who became pregnant placed their children for adoption when the babies were born. Newborn adoptions were the trend. Single motherhood was virtually taboo until women became confident and empowered by the revolutionary ideas of the Feminist Movement. Prior to that time, single women who chose to keep their babies were often considered social outcasts and other not-so-nice names. Partly to protect their children from labels and a cruel society, many unwed mothers chose relinquishment.

Today, many unwed mothers choose to raise their children alone rather than surrender them for adoption. From my perspective, I see that the Feminist Movement helped change societal perspectives about unwed mothers, but it seems that many unwed mothers remained subservient in other ways. Over the last two decades we’ve seen a rise in the number of unwed mothers who turn to substance abuse or end up in physically abusive relationships—both of which often result in children being removed from their homes and placed into foster care.

For those of us who consider ourselves to be upstanding, law-abiding citizens, the behaviors of foster children’s birth parents often seem wrong. It’s understandable for us to feel resentment towards the birth parents: after all, we sign on as foster parents to help kids in need, and that includes providing them a safe haven when their birth family fails.

Being a haven, however, does not mean we have a right to judge or be hostile towards the child’s birth family. It’s important for us to recognize and remember that regardless of parents’ behaviors, they are still the child’s legitimate link to a biological history.

The reality of adulthood is that our childhood dreams rarely develop as we envisioned. Whatever fantasies we had are often shattered or, at best, redefined along life’s journey. How many children set their goals and aspirations on being a drug dealer or an alcoholic when they grow up? None that I know. Children fantasize their adult life will be filled with love, family, financial security, and sometimes fame—not abandonment, abuse, poverty, jail time, or having their children taken into child protective services.

When a birth mother loses her child, either through planned adoptive placements or the foster care system, a gaping wound is created that sometimes never heals. Thoughts of failure can dominate her thinking pattern, especially if the child was forcibly removed from her home due to neglect or physical or sexual abuse. Feelings of failure have a way of feeding on themselves until their victim becomes saturated with despair. This only serves to create more chaos and confirm to parents who have failed their child that life is hopeless and this child is probably better off without them. This defeatist outlook complicates reunification efforts.

The concept that children are never better off without their biological parents is difficult for most of us to truly grasp, knowing what we do about the reasons why children are taken into child protective custody. But it’s important for us to recognize that it’s not the parent a child is better off without—it’s the bad behavior of the parent that the child is better off not experiencing.

Admittedly, it’s a challenge to separate the two, because we equate inappropriateness with the person who is behaving inappropriately. But sometimes, as the guardian of these disenfranchised children, it’s better for the child if we can separate the two issues, keeping the parent’s position separate from the parent’s bad behavior, because—for better or worse—that child is biologically connected to that parent. When the child is very young, she has not developed the ability to comprehend the complexity of these issues. It’s only through maturity that the child will be able to evaluate her experiences with more objectivity.

What We Can Do

So, what we can do as the guardians for children in foster care? We can:

• Provide a stable, nurturing, and safe environment for them
  
  
• Find ways to honor birth parents regardless of their past behavior
  
  
• Help the children in our care to identify with positive experiences they had with their biological parents and fertilize those tiny little seeds of goodness as the children grow
  
  
• Refrain from talking negatively about birth family members in front of the child

When the case manager calls and tells you that your foster child’s birth mother is back in jail or rehab and won’t make it to the planned visitation time, it would be very natural for you to think to yourself, “What a loser! This child will never get anything positive from his mother.”

Thinking it is okay. Saying it aloud is never okay. Instead, you might tell the child that the case worker called to say that his mother has to complete some other criteria for DSS and the visit has to be postponed for awhile. This helps preserve the child’s innocence, and as foster parents, sometimes we’re a child’s last opportunity to be just a child and live in that joyous stage. Bad-mouthing the birth parents:

• Causes the child undue stress
  
  
• Adds a burden of guilt and shame to the child
  
  
• Lowers the child’s self-esteem
  
  
• Devalues a family member
  
  
• Generates doubt and encourages feelings of hopelessness for the child
  
  
• Creates an emotional distance between you and the child
  
  
• Can cause the child to completely shut down emotionally
  
  
• Sometimes leads to the child finding ways to self-medicate for the pain they’re unable to express aloud

It is a wise foster parent who looks to the positive and helps the child find goodness in what we might perceive to be the opposite. While a seasoned foster parent can usually recognize the signs of impending termination of parental rights (TPR), no one is infallible. Some children will leave your home and return to their biological families. If we, as caregivers, shut out the birth parents to the child we’re caring for, then all we’ve accomplished is to make the transition home even more difficult.

Remember the saying, “If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all?” For some parents, this is the best approach. No comment. But be cautious, because even in our silence, we might be sending the wrong message. Children often perceive silence as, “If it isn’t something you can talk about, then it must be bad,” which opens the door to more complex issues that can grow within already fragile emotions.

If we can embrace the birth parent—even if only in concept and verbally—then we are doing our jobs as the foster parents for the children in our care. Their mental and emotional well-being is just as important as their physical well-being, if not more so. Broken bones can heal. Broken spirits often do not—at least not as easily.

Serving as a foster parent, guardian, or adoptive parent can be a rewarding experience for all parties involved if we are able to maintain an open heart and open mind. We don’t have to literally embrace what is un-embraceable in the birth parents. But we do owe it to the children we care for to find a happy medium in our relationships with birth parents in an effort to meet the end goal of foster care, which is always to serve in the best interest of the child.

© Copyright 2002 by Julie Jarrell Bailey. Bailey is a reunited birth mother, an adoptive mother of three special needs siblings, and co-author of the book Adoption Reunion Survival Guide (See review, this issue). Bailey has presented testimony before the NC Legislature for adoption reform several times since 1994, and co-created the NC Center for Adoption Education with Lynn Giddens in 1997. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

 

Copyright � 2002 Jordan Institute for Families