Making the Decision
It is obvious that the decision to care for a relative's child should not be made lightly. It is a choice that will bring dramatic changes to the lifestyle of the caregiver, especially a grandparent who may have seen this stage of life as a time to be free, to travel, to take classes, or just to enjoy a more relaxed family and social life.
Before making a decision, it makes sense for potential relative caregivers to explore these issues:
- Are they ready to make the significant changes in their life that the care of a child requires? These may include changes in lifestyle, job, social activities, housing, and privacy.
- How do other family members-husband or children-feel about it? Are they supportive? To what extent will they participate in the child's care?
- How will potential caregivers relate to the child's birthmother or birthfather? What are their expectations?
- How do they feel about the child? How prepared are they to deal with problems the child may have because of past experiences?
- Can they afford the cost of caring for the child?
- Does their health -- physical or emotional -- allow them to make this commitment?
- What services and resources are available from public and private agencies that might significantly affect their ability to handle the new responsibility?
Adoption experts like Lois Melina, editor of Adopted Child newsletter and nationally known author of a number of books on adoption, caution family members to search their souls before agreeing to a kinship placement. Perhaps most important is their attitude toward the child. Can they accept him or her as a unique individual or will they expect the child to have the same weaknesses as the mother or father? Also critical, are they prepared to explain the birthparents' problems to the children in a way that will not damage their perceptions of them? Can they, for instance, separate a mother's behavior from her value as a human being so her child can feel good about being connected to her?
"This is an issue, of course, for all foster parents, even when they are not relatives," says Melina. "But it's more complicated with family members. It's easier, for example, for a nonrelative to speak compassionately about a birthparent who is an alcoholic than for a family member who has experienced firsthand the birthparent's violence when drunk, inability to take responsibility for his actions, expectations that he will be forgiven for his offenses when he is sober, and refusal to seek help."
Relative caregivers must also be able to develop ground rules about the role of the birthparent -- how often she will visit, how much she will participate in the child's upbringing, which parenting decisions, if any, she will make, and how she is expected to behave if she wants to see her child.
Children also must be helped to sort out their confusion about who the parents really are and who is in charge of their life. Is it the birthmother who shows up from time to time or the aunt with whom a child lives? The way the family handles these issues affects the relationship between the birthparent and caregiver relatives as well as the child's perception of himself.
These issues become even more complex when the informal or formal foster care arrangement turns into a permanent adoption.
"Adoption within families is not without its own unique challenges," says Sharon Kaplan Roszia, co-author of Open Adoption Experience and a well-known expert on foster parenting and adoption. In family adoption, everyone has two relationships to the child. The child's birth relatives are also his adoptive relatives. Adoption within a family may have 'strings attached' that reflect underlying issues in the family. Nonetheless, the child will not be confused about who his parents are as long as the adults are not confused and act accordingly."
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