The Pros And Cons Of Foster Care

Kicking off their marriage at young ages, my parents, Dan and Cindy opened up their home to children in need of a home, the basic necessities, and of course loving care. In other words, they were in full swing of becoming foster care parents. Foster Care is a” supervised care for orphaned, neglected, or delinquent children or for persons mentally ill in a substitute home or an institution on either a full-time or day-care basis” (Merriam 2015). They cared for many different children over the course of approximately 15 years before they decided to start a family of their own with 5 children. Four out of five being adopted and three out of four were in their foster care. There are many reasons why people choose to care for children who are not

For one, the stigma on the system is perceived as negative and damaging to the child and to the parent themselves. Not only them but also to the child’s direct peers. Because people put a bad connotation to the topic, those kids will be less confident in telling people they are placed in a home, or even embarrassed to admit it at all. Other times the kid hears and learns what our society thinks a foster kid should behave like and act, in that case they try to fit the stereotype. Why would they react this way to the bias? They do because they think they will then be able to fit in with everyone, and to be accepted by the public. They relate to this being their social identity theory, because why fight the stereotype? Wouldn’t it be much easier to just give in and act how people already see you as? In my experience with foster children I do witness a lot of times where he/she would watch something on TV about foster care/adoption and try to then act like that act actor/actress. Most of the time, they are confused on how to behave. Many are not sure what our rules are in our house because there are so many different rules and obligations they have had to learn throughout the years they’ve been passed around from home to home with different meanings all around them. There are many different codes for how a child should act and what that code means when they happen to act a certain way. Even as an adult, I am still tangled up on how we as a culture have so many different protocols for everything and anything. I can only imagine what it is like for a child who is learning who he/she is and relating that behavior to see if the people who they want most to accept them will or