The Attachment Irony

When people find out that my wife and I are foster parents, we often sense some underlying feelings of guilt on their part. Perhaps they feel that we have some hidden agenda aimed at shaming them into a similar pursuit of social justice, or maybe some are experiencing honest conviction about their lack of concern for the underprivileged among us. They probably wouldn't feel this way if they knew how much we agonized over our initial decision to become foster parents. While we are glad to encourage people to give it a try, we certainly don't feel that anyone is obligated to do so.

Some people go as far as to offer us excuses as to why they are not foster parents. By far the most common of these is fear of attachment, which is usually expressed in either the form of a question ("Don't you get attached?") or a resigned statement of self-awareness ("Oh, I could never do that because I would get too attached."). Somewhere around the twentieth time I heard this excuse, I had to resist the urge to blurt out a sarcastic response such as "Well, once you become cold and uncaring like us it's easy to resist the trap of emotional attachment and become successful foster parents."

The irony of this excuse is that the people who are most prone to become emotionally attached to foster children are probably the best candidates to parent them. It is precisely this attachment that will provide children with the most developmental benefit, even if it only lasts a few weeks or months. I don't doubt that some people would be driven to the edge of despair upon experiencing foster parenting's inevitable cycle of attachment and separation, but I suspect that most people are emotionally strong enough to withstand it. Perhaps their excuses are indicative of an internal struggle of conscience. 

Nobody should feel obligated to be a foster parent, but I would encourage those who have ever considered it to remember what I call the "attachment irony":  The stronger your fear of attachment, the more reason you have to become a foster parent.

For those who are interested, here's a good foster parenting testimony: Molly McCullough's Testimony