agonyaunt | Dear Prudence: Am I Possibly Stealing These Kids?

My husband and I (both white men) decided to become foster parents several years ago, with the ultimate goal of eventually adopting. We took the classes and our first placement came to us in Sept 2020, during the pandemic. In my estimation, we have done an excellent job with the day-to-day, but something has come up that I’m at a loss about. I’ll try to be brief.

In short, the agency has decided that the children’s extended family (they are two siblings, both parents are incarcerated for unknown “drug-related” reasons) is ill-equipped to care for them, despite owning a home, seeming to have a stable income, and already having raised two children previously. They have asked us to step in and proceed with a full adoption. My husband wants to do this as he has always wanted children, and these two are pretty awesome. I am very hung up on a number of things that can be boiled down to: I feel like we are stealing someone else’s kids. We don’t know (and the agency won’t say, for “privacy” reasons) why the parents are incarcerated, and we don’t know why the extended family has been ruled out and denied custody (they really seem fine, stable, nice, and they are interested in the kids), also for “privacy” reasons.

This seems insane to me. What if the parents are in jail for possession, or some other goofy crime that God knows I’ve committed 8,000 times myself (in bygone years)? What if the extended family is perfectly fine but has been precluded due to some bureaucratic nonsense issue like lacking paperwork? We live in a large urban area and the foster system is known, according to them, for its diligence, but this still feels icky. Both our families are pro the adoption, and I’m the only one pointing out red flags. They think it’s because I’m not “fully committed” to the idea of adoption or having kids, but I can tell you I’ve been agonizing over this and can’t get past the lack of data we have on how the kids have come to this point. They are Latinx kids caught up in foster care and the carceral state. Am I overthinking this? Should we trust the agency’s process? What should I do?

— Stealing Someone’s Kids?

I think your concerns are very, very real and very thoughtful. But the thing is, they are about the system, not about this one adoption. Declining to move forward won’t free your kids from that system and all of its problems—it will (as far as I know; hopefully a reader will correct me if I’m off base here) simply lead to them being placed with another family that may or may not be as loving and sensitive as you are.

I think you should do it, and make it a priority to give the kids as much contact as possible with their family of origin, and as much reassurance as possible that they are not terrible people.
So no, you’re not overthinking it at all. You are thinking about it the perfect amount. And I have a feeling you’ll put the same amount of thought into all the future aspects of raising Latinx kids and the many complicated issues that come with being an adoptive parent.

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So, wait. If a kid has bio family willing and able to take care of them, why are they in foster care/up for adoption in the first place? I mean, I know the system is seventeen kinds of messed up, but it seems odd that they would base custody on an arbitrary length of time.

It really depends on the laws of the state (I say as a lawyer). There are states that have laws that say if a kid has been in foster care X out of Y months, they automatically become adoption-eligible. There are also laws that say, if a family has X number of children living under a single roof, that family isn't eligible to foster kids. So, there is a scenario where the parents are in jail/prison for long enough, and the extended family has enough kids, where the laws just say that they aren't eligible to care for said kids.

Is it fucked up? Sure, it is. But the law is meant to reduce the number of children in foster care, promote stable families for those kids, and make sure that people aren't fostering "too many" children in order to get the money from fostering them.

Thank you a lot for this information. Today I have learned something!

I get all of that. What puzzles me is "If an adoption isn't approved by the end of the 4 years, the kid returns to the bio family, either to the parents or to some other members of the extended family." Maybe I'm misreading, but it sounds like if someone doesn't take the kids permanently in a certain length of time, they go back to the bio family regardless of fitness. And I don't understand why, if the bio family was fit in the first place, the kids were still up for adoption, and what happens at the four year mark that didn't happen before then. I mean, I'm assuming they don't just say, "Well, we tried to find them a safe permanent home, but that didn't work out, so I guess these people can take them."

I guess I'm not entirely clear on where you're getting the "if an adoption isn't approved by the end of four years" thing. It might be that my brain has been sucked dry by work today, and my reading comprehension is broken, so apologies if that's the case.

The thing is, the kids won't go back to bio family if bio family has been deemed unfit. The four year mark makes sense to me. In my state, I think the law says that once a kid is in foster care 15 out of 22 months, they're adoption-eligible. But that would mean, if the foster family isn't ready or able to adopt, a new foster family that is would be located. The state isn't going to send kids to an unsafe environment.

The four years was a quote from the comment I replied to. That's not what the commenter meant, but it read that way to me, which is why I asked.

On top of

jerusha 's answer, my guess is that the bio family might be considered unsuitable for whatever reason the first time, but that was corrected over time and that's why they're given the child back. Things like unemployment, poverty, etc. Once that changes, and if the bio family is still willing, there's no reason for the child to still be in foster care. That's why the foster period is so long in my country, I think. It's meant as a temporary measure, not a pit stop before adoption. That's why adopting after only one year of foster caring for a kid seemed rushed to me.

*How* a particular child ends up flagged for the system while others don't, even if both of their willing extended family might have problems, I have no idea.

Edited 2021-08-27 03:30 (UTC)

No, I get the "they weren't fit then, and now they are." I'm just not getting what happens at the four year mark to make the bio family suitable. If they go back because the bio family has fixed whatever the problem was, yeah, that's good, but the post I replied to sounded a lot like if that doesn't happen in the four years while the child is in foster care/eligible for adoption, they'll still go back to the bio family.

Ah, sorry. What I meant is that if after that time period the bio family isn't considered suitable, the fostering is formalized into an adoption, and the kids stay with the adoptive family from then on. I can see how that bit was badly worded.

One situation that came up recently in a thing I read was where iirc the aunt would have looked perfectly suitable, and was even originally approved, but the actual parent had a history of endangerment (which is why the kids were removed) and when the kids were placed with the aunt, she consistently left them unsupervised with their mother. Which would be hard to avoid when their mother is your beloved sister who wants them back! But the mother was still doing things like leaving a two-year-old alone for entire days while out looking for drugs. So they ended up having to disqualify the sister too. That was one where I went in thinking the foster agency was clearly wrong and ending like "well, maybe they did have a justifiable reason". All decisions about removing kids are going to be fucked up one way or another.

I think that's often an issue in cases like this - an abusive parent really, really shouldn't have any unsupervised contact with the kids at all until whatever inspired the removal is handled, and foster parents who have a connection to the parent won't enforce that. I'm not sure how that would apply in a case where the parents were both in jail, but I suppose something similar could have come up (i.e., "fine, stable, nice" doesn't rule out aunt's husband having child abuse priors or something. Of course it could also be aunt's husband having marijuana possession priors.)

Okay, but how does the passage of time change that? Why would that aunt be suitable when the kids have been in foster care for four years?

Oh, sorry, I missed that you were asking about that specific part. Yeah that doesn't make sense to me either. I don't know if any US systems that would do that.

Dear Prudence: Am I Possibly Stealing These Kids?

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