Book Recommendation!

As I have waited ALL morning for our new dishwasher to be delivered which hasn't happened yet (blogpost for another day), I was able to finish my library book!! I picked up this book, Another Mother; Coparenting with the Foster Care System randomly on Monday in the parenting section. I have read plenty of books on adoption, but have actually never read one about foster parenting. This book proved you can't judge a book by it's cover...literally...cause the cover is kinda ugly. But the book was AWESOME! It is a woman's account of navigating the foster care system with her infant placement from 2000-2002. She is a mother of two children by birth and she and her husband wanted to "give back to society" by foster parenting. Of course they never anticipated how much the experience would change them. I thought I would quote some of the book here that was especially impactful to me:

First she talks about the arrival of her 5 week old foster baby without the "usual cultural rituals" like baby announcements, showers, etc. She says, "It bothered me that Cecilia didn't have the same fanfare that other children had when they were born or adopted. Why does it matter? I thought. She doesn't know any different. But ritual is part of our human social condition and not being able to partake in it on her behalf made me unhappy." I SO can relate to this feeling with all of my babies. We only had two "fanfare" kids...our foster baby girl that was an adoption placement but fell through, and Vivi. Maybe because people don't rally around "temporary" placements because they are seen well...as temporary.

In another section she hits the nail on the head with this statement, "...you are at the mercy of an agency that doesn't create most of the regulations but must enforce them. Complicating this are unreasonable and excessive rules that the agency may not enforce but can use as evidence of noncompliance if it chooses to." The Lord knows we found this to be true!

They were an upper middle class foster family and did a wonderful job caring for the baby, so it was refreshing to read these words that echo our feelings exactly...."My thesaurus has the following synonyms for the word 'foster': back, champion, support,uphold, entertain, harbor, house, lodge, shelter, accomodate, assist, favor,help, oblige. We were prepared to do all these things as foster parents. What we weren't interested in doing was going to useless training, having to get permission to go on vacation, getting reprimanding letters in the mail when we were behind on some regulation (regardless of whether we were at fault), and spending time on paperwork that had to do with agency business, not with parenting. But we did all those things."

And one of my FAVORITE quotes from the book on the topic of people saying "I could never do that, I would get too attached": "The next time someone tells me that they would get too attached, I'm going to say 'You're probably right. Why bother risking your own feelings for a kid you don't even know? I mean really, who cares?' We talked about how warnings about 'getting too attached' sometimes seemed to imply the speaker was taking the high road-suggesting how sensitive they were when in fact they probably didn't want to disrupt their lives, a more honest and understandable excuse. We wanted to say to people, 'Yes, getting attached is a risk, but we are adults and we are supposed to care about children in our society, even if it is difficult.' AMEN!

She also goes on to talk in depth about transracial fostering/adopting, and using Medicaid and WIC. That was some really good stuff too...but I will stop with the quotes here. If you are thinking about fostering or are a current foster parent...run to GET this book. You can order it online and read the synopsis, HERE.

Or go see if your library has it for free!! It is a real treasure and will help you feel not so alone as you navigate this tricky system!