Foster or Otherwise, Parenting is Parenting: Love, care, and try your best
Media content has the power to shape perceptions and views on a mass scale. Unfortunately, media portrayals of youth in foster care are often negative and perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes. In this special blog series, The Center for Scholars and Storytellers is exploring this topic from multiple perspectives to inform and inspire the creation of accurate, empowering, and socially responsible media portrayals of foster care.
Marianne Guilfoyle, Chief Innovations Officer at LA-based Allies for Every Child and a key foster care advisor to the Center for Scholars and Storytellers, often remarks: “If I had a nickel for every person who said they had considered being foster parents…” And she is right. It’s not that people haven’t considered fostering, it’s that they’ve never seriously considered it. And far too often, their reason is that they don’t think they could do it. Indeed, multi-racial, same-sex couple Ching-chu Hu and Jim Van-Reeth, who have adopted four children through the foster care system, say they constantly hear comments such as “Oh, I could never do that” or “You’re stronger than me!” Their thoughts on this? “We believe most people on the planet naturally have the necessary tools to be foster parents -- to love and nurture a child.” Positive media portrayal of fostering can play a large role in empowering people to see that they can indeed foster. We need to see more of these stories.
Another honest response they get from people interested in adoption are fears that adopting from the system is too “dangerous”, and international adoption will get you “safer” children with “less issues.” To this, Hu and Van-Reeth remark; “Children are amazingly resilient, and the issues we all face as parents are strikingly similar, whether a child is from the foster care system, international adoption, or is a biological child. The primary difference is that we came into it expecting challenges, whereas those with biological children may be caught off guard by difficulties if they arise.” Rich Valenza, founder of Raise a Child and himself a father of two children he adopted through the foster care system, echoed this sentiment, reflecting on how the conversations with other parents at school drop-off were often quite therapeutic. He noticed, “Whether raising your birth children or children through foster care, the parenting problems you face are pretty similar! You have expectations of what raising a child will be like, but the reality quickly sinks in for both scenarios that it’s often not the way you planned. You’ll never be fully prepared. You likely won’t hear “thank you for giving me an amazing life” from your foster children as you tuck them into bed, but it’s a safe bet that you won’t hear that from your birth children either.” Content creators should strive to show the parenting commonalities in raising children, from the struggles to the joys, regardless of how their children entered their lives.
But this is not to dismiss the trauma that foster children experience in leaving their home, and whatever difficult life they may have endured previous to entering foster care (or within foster care). And this needs to be appropriately reflected in media, too. Valenza is a proud proponent of family therapy and removing all associated stigma, “Whether you have birth or foster children, all families can benefit from therapy-- it needs to be seen as a bonus to your life, an education into yourself.” In addition to recruiting foster parents, Raise a Child makes an effort to continually support parents throughout the foster/adoption process. They are currently partnered with LA-based Allies for Every Child on a pilot program that provides extra support and training to remind parents, for instance, that when problems arise, “this is not about me, this is about the needs of the child.” Portraying counseling as normative in fictional media could go a long way in reducing the stigma of seeking professional help, both for parents and children.
One of the biggest lessons that Hu and Van-Reeth encountered over the years was learning, accepting, and supporting the perspectives of the foster children’s previous lives, and not judging the biological parents (who often grew up in similar situations). They explain, “No matter how horrific we may find their previous life, it was still their home, their reality, their “comfortable” environment. It is the lives they were used to, and anything different, no matter how safe, how loving, how supportive, is still different, unusual, and unfamiliar to their world. And it takes a lot of time and nurturing for them to trust a safe and loving environment.”
Worrying that a foster child you hope to adopt might be reunified with their birth family is another fear that can lead people to pursue private or international adoption instead. Indeed, Hu and Van-Reeth went through this in the most heart-wrenching way; “Losing our 18 month old son-who we had had since day one- to his birth parents who we knew were falling back into drugs, was the hardest moment in our fostering journey. Especially the fact that as foster parents we felt we had no voice, no “seat” at the judicial table. Those scars left indelible memories.” Ultimately, their son did end up returning back to their home, and is now adopted by the Hu and Van-Reeth. Those interested in fostering and adoption and those creating media about foster care should understand that there are different paths to take, depending on the long-term option desired, and the amount of potential heartbreak you are willing to risk. Media content can help by portraying all types of fostering, including:
A foster parent that just fosters with no intention of adopting (roles which are very much needed since reunification with the birth family is the primary goal for children entering into the foster care system.)
A foster/adoptive parent who takes in foster children who might become available for adoption (and therefore would adopt the child if it was a good fit), but the child could instead be reunified with their birth family.
An adoptive-only parent who will only take a child into their home if they are already classified as “adoptive,” meaning the birth parents have terminated their parental rights.
Finally, another reason people are hesitant to become foster parents is because they’re afraid they won’t be good enough, or they will mess up as a parent. But ultimately, as Velenza correctly puts it, “Worrying about being good enough parent is exactly what will make someone a good foster parent. This shows that they are conscious of their role, and it shows they care. And ultimately, that is what it takes.”
For foster parents, there are countless instances along the way that remind you you’re doing a great job. For Valenza, as his children get older he finds he gets immeasurable pride from seeing them thrive, and even beginning to realize and appreciate the work he does for the foster care community. As Hu and Van-Reeth reflect; “It’s the small things: it’s seeing them come out of their shells, adjusting, being nurtured, opening up, and giving a hug. It’s seeing them bring their defenses down, grow, and become stronger and more comfortable with the world around them. It’s giving them first-time experiences, whether that’s flying on a plane, going to a park, or even, shockingly, giving them breakfast.”
Actionable Insights
Write and cast realistic, everyday people as foster parents who aren’t perfect people, but care and are doing their best.
- Media that gets it right: Instant Family - the couple is refreshingly honest in their uncertainty and process to fostering, making them extremely relatable.
Show the similar joys and struggles that parents face, regardless of whether their children are biological, adopted internationally/privately, or from the foster care system.
Normalize seeking counseling and therapy, show how it is beneficial and healthy for the entire family.
Colleen Russo Johnson, PhD
Senior Fellow of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers
This blog series is supported in part by the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families.
Let Love Define Family: Portraying a Modern Generation of Foster Parents
Let Love Define Family:
Portraying a Modern Generation of Foster Parents
Media content has the power to shape perceptions and views on a mass scale. Unfortunately, media portrayals of youth in foster care are often negative and perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes. In this special blog series, The Center for Scholars and Storytellers is exploring this topic from multiple perspectives to inform and inspire the creation of accurate, empowering, and socially responsible media portrayals of foster care.
Just as there are many destructive stereotypes about youth in foster care, there are countless misperceptions of the type of people who become foster parents and their underlying motivations. From the perfect, savior, do-good foster couple, to the careless, mean foster parent who is only in it for the money, these unhelpful stereotypes prevent everyday people from seeing themselves as a foster parent, thus reducing the options for children waiting for a family. This is particularly problematic when it comes to media portrayals, as it helps to “see it to be it.” Indeed, in the previous post in this special foster care series, a foster parent noted how they are typically portrayed as either “perfect people” or “system milkers.”
Why is this critical? From talking to countless foster care professionals in the United States and Canada, it’s clear that their number one problem is a shortage of foster parents, particularly from minority groups. Therefore, we flagged this as one of the most important topics to communicate to content creators. Because media has immense power to influence behaviors, portraying foster parents and the motivations behind fostering in a relatable, positive, and realistic way could inspire viewers to consider being foster parents themselves. As Marianne Guilfoyle, Chief Innovations Officer at LA-based Allies for Every Child states, “Media has the ability to drive home the notion-- if not you, then who will answer the call to meet the need of the children in your community?”
More specifically, we need to reach and mobilize a new generation of foster parents. This is the mission behind the LA-based non-profit organization Raise a Child, where they are urging people to “reimagine foster parents.” I spoke with the organization’s founder, Rich Valenza, to learn more about his personal path to fostering and adoption, the goals of the organization, and the message he has for content creators. (Click here to see Valenza and his family featured as the first LGBTQ+ family featured on the annual CBS special, A Home for the Holidays.)
“At Raise a Child, our motto is, Let Love Define Family,” says Valenza. “There are no accidents or sudden decisions in fostering and adopting. You are planning a family and you chose those children. It’s truly a thing of love and acceptance, and it needs to be portrayed that way.”
Valenza suggests we need to “rebrand” what it means and looks like to be a foster parent. Indeed, today, more than ever before, there are countless new drivers for people to become foster parents and adopt through foster parenting. It is more than just heterosexuals couples who can’t conceive biologically who foster, and media content should reflect these modern realities. Foster parents range from same-sex couples wanting to build a family, to single men and women who don’t want to wait for a partner to start a family, to those who are environmentally conscious looking for a way to raise children without increasing their carbon footprint, to people driven by social justice who want to help elevate kids out of a repressive cycle to make a positive impact on thier community. As Ching-chu Hu and Jim Van-Reeth, multi-racial, well-educated, same-sex couple from Ohio who have adopted four children through the foster care system point out, “There is no more effective way to positively impact children and ultimately society as a whole.”
Speaking further to social justice, there are countless horrible circumstances for children around the world, and even in our own country, that often leave people feeling helpless. “People are justifiably outraged,” explain Hu and Van-Reeth. “Perhaps we can’t do anything about these things, but we can at least help out local children in the foster care system who are from broken homes and give them a fresh start. Helping out locally does positively affect the world.”
The system is also more progressive than some may think. For instance, Hu and Van-Reeth assumed that because they lived in a small, conservative town, they would have to adopt internationally. But during the adoption certification program, they noticed that representatives from the local county foster agency kept approaching them to chat. Being used to prejudice in other areas of their lives, they at first thought they were being further checked out to see if their motives to adopt were pure. It wasn’t until about halfway through the courses that they realized these agency workers were trying to convince them to work with the local foster care agency rather than adopt internationally. As they put it, “The foster care workers didn't see color or sexuality - they were simply evaluating based on capabilities.”
Similarly, going into the foster process Valenza expected to face some discrimnation as a single, gay man. Instead, leadership within LA County Foster Care quickly realized what an incredible foster father and advocate he was, and recruited him to help them encourage more people from the LGBTQ+ community to become foster parents -- the genesis of Raise a Child.
Actionable insights for content creators:
Depict relatable foster parents from a variety of backgrounds (e.g. race, culture, LGBTQ+) and family structure.
- Media that gets it right: A lesbian couple in The Fosters, An African-American couple in This is Us.
Include modern motivations for fostering. Examples include: single parents, same-sex parents, people driven by social justice and/or environmental reasons.
Colleen Russo Johnson, PhD
Senior Fellow of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers
This blog series is supported in part by the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families.
There’s More to the Picture: What the adults of Foster Care want content creators to know
“There’s More to the Picture”:
What the adults of Foster Care want content creators to know
Media content has the power to shape perceptions and views on a mass scale. Unfortunately, media portrayals of youth in foster care are often negative and perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes. In this special blog series, The Center for Scholars and Storytellers is exploring this topic from multiple perspectives to inform and inspire the creation of accurate, empowering, and socially responsible media portrayals of youth in foster care.
“I think most people don't really understand why someone would want to be a foster parent. They don't understand the positive effects a foster parent can have on a child and their birth family, and what they get back (emotionally) in return.”
When we think of foster care, we immediately picture children and teens. But for every youth in care, there are many adults directly attached, including birth parents, foster parents, and social care workers. So when we look at foster care portrayals in fictional media, it is critical to take a holistic look that includes how the adults within the system are depicted. To do so, we sought feedback from two foster parents (one male, one female) and two foster care professionals (both females in leadership roles at foster care agencies).
Can fictional media persuade (or dissuade) adults from becoming foster parents?
According to all four respondents, the answer is a resounding yes. But, it does go in both directions. One respondent stated that they believe the negative images in the media have contributed to the difficulty of recruiting foster parents, whereas the foster Dad said it was actually a positive portrayal of foster care in fictional media that initially inspired him to become a foster parent (he specifically noted the CBC special “A Home for the Holidays” and ABC’s “The Fosters”.)
It is difficult for people not involved with the foster care system to understand the motivations for becoming a foster parent. As one respondent stated, “There are some that think foster parents are doing it just for the money. I think most people don't really understand why someone would want to be a foster parent. They don't understand the positive effects a foster parent can have on a child and their birth family, and what they get back (emotionally) in return.”
The two men featured in our previous blog who were formerly in foster care noted additional motivations they perceived for adults wanting to become foster parents, including: feeling bad about the large number of children in care, wanting to help nurture a child while in retirement, a desire for children but an inability to have biological kids, or because they themselves were in foster care. To that point, one of the former foster youth said he would absolutely consider being a foster parent one day, saying “I was blessed to have been adopted to a loving family and I know the feeling of lost hope. Returning the favor or more importantly having the power to change someone’s life for the better is the ultimate dream”.
Unfortunately, misunderstandings regarding the type of people who become foster parents seep into media content, and can dissuade people from wanting to explore fostering. Indeed, another respondent noted how foster care parents are often represented as either “perfect people” or “system milkers”, which just further drives inaccurate stereotypes and prevents viewers from seeing themselves in those roles. Instead, foster care parents want to be “portrayed as multidimensional, from varied backgrounds and economic classes, motivated by caring for kids in care”, and “regular people who desire to help a child in need”.
When media gets it right. The movie “Instant Family” does a terrific job of showcasing “regular people” who decide to foster for a variety of reasons. The film honestly depicts the rollercoaster of emotions, including realistic doubt in their decision to foster. By portraying a relatable, imperfect, but well-intentioned couple, viewers are more likely to see themselves in that situation and consider becoming foster parents.
Overcoming the “evil child snatcher” trope of social workers
Social care workers have one of the most difficult jobs. One respondent mentioned how they are unfortunately part of an overall “failed system”, making their job seemingly impossible at times. Indeed, they are working within a confusing system, in rapidly changing and high-intensity situations. But our respondents noted that the general public really lacks an understanding of what foster care social workers actually do, other than “remove children from their homes”, and simply classify it as a “very difficult job that they themselves would not want to do”. This does not encourage people to enter the job, and media portrayals certainly do not help. Social care workers are often depicted as evil child snatchers or overly do-gooders that few can relate to. The reality is that they are well-intentioned, trained professionals who care about the well-being of children. It’s important that content creators capture this difficulty while still portraying social workers that have a good relationship with the foster youth in their care.
When media gets it right. The social care worker depicted in season three of the television drama “This Is Us” impressively captures the highs and lows of the job, and showcases the benefit of trust built between a worker and child in care.
Working towards a more compassionate lens on birth parents
Media portrayals of birth parents rarely stray from the stereotypes of, as one respondent explained, “bad people who have done horrible things to their children and don’t deserve the chance to make things right or parent their children ever again”, or simply put by another respondent, “awful people”.
The truth is, more often or not, these are people who have had a hard life and a spout of bad luck. Many people live paycheck to paycheck and could also easily fall into a difficult situation. Furthermore, the disease of addiction can become so overpowering that it consumes them and prevents them from being the parent they want to be at that time. They are flawed people, just like everyone.
Our respondents all expressed a desire to see birth parents shown in a more compassionate light. One respondent noted wanting to see them as less pathologized and caricatured. Another said “birth parents are often people with mental health issues, substance abuse problems, who come from their own dysfunctional families, and did not set out to hurt their children. They may not be able to parent them, but they do love them. And it is possible for people to change.” Another mentioned that “most birth parents do not intend to hurt or neglect their children, they over discipline for a myriad of reasons, they are addicted to drugs or homeless because they were barely making it to begin with and had an event that tipped the scales.”
When media gets it right. Season three of “This Is Us” depicts this nuanced role of a birth mother perfectly, showing the desire to be the mom both she (and her daughter) wanted her to be, but doomed by many factors including her own rough upbringing, addictions, and bad partners. Through it all, however, you could see that the love and admiration she had for her daughter was genuine.
Actionable insights for content creators:
Foster parent portrayal: Show relatable characters from a variety of backgrounds (including race, economic, sexual orientation, and cultural). Don’t shy away from them asking taboo questions that potential foster parents might have. Show a realistic experience of the foster parent experience-- the ups and the downs-- but strive for an overall positive outlook.
Social worker portrayal: Make an effort to show individuals who truly care about the child’s well being, and are doing their absolute best working in an extremely complex and sometimes failed system.
Birth parent portrayal: Avoid falling into stereotypes. Give the character the depth and compassion deserved that explains why he or she ended up in this position.
Colleen Russo Johnson, PhD
Senior Fellow of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers
This blog series is supported in part by the UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families.
Upcoming foster care blog posts in this special series to explore:
Foster parent perspective, and how to encourage more
Features on media that “gets it right”