Over the past two weeks I’ve been writing about the topic of bonding. I started by thinking about what bonding is and why we need to focus more on it. Last week I wrote about the ways in which bonding might be an issue for birth parents. Today I’d like to move our thoughts to consider the issues that impact bonding within fostering and adoption.
After that first blog about bonding I received so many emails from foster and adoptive parents wishing to share their story. One was from a foster parent I know who specialises in pre-adoption placements for babies and toddlers. She expressed how easy it is to think that a child who came into care at birth wouldn’t have any attachment issues and how this is often not the case. The separation from birth mum is always traumatic and we must not presume that the foster or adoptive parent will be able to bond either.
Most of the bonding issues I have already outlined also can be true for foster and adoptive parents. What follows now is additional factors that are worth considering.
1. Post-Parenting Depression.
We talk about post-natal depression but it might be more helpful to think about post-parenting depression instead. The term post-adoption depression has been around for some time. It’s been researched and there are recommendations for addressing it. Post-fostering depression is not discussed and yet it does exist. I know this because I experienced it. For me, it has the same hallmarks of PAD with the added complexities that come with parenting as a professional within the fostercare system.
It’s time to honour all post-parenting depression experiences and recognise their potential impact on the parent-child bond.
2. Emotional Capacity
I stated that for birth parents, emotional capacity was one of the greatest risks to bonding. This is also true for foster and adoptive parents. However, it is more complex for us. When parenting a traumatised child, there is a greater need for a parent to be emotionally available and resilient. As we start to try and build a bond with our children, we are likely to begin to provoke great emotion within them. We need to be capable of meeting that need.
It’s worth also considering that the bonding process follows the application, assessment, approval and matching processes of fostering and adoption. So just prior to the child arriving in our homes, we will have been on a massive emotional rollercoaster ourselves.
3. Child’s Behaviour.
I would argue that it’s a lot easier to bond with a cute, new born baby than it is to bond with a 10 year who tells you to “fuck off” every five minutes! Birth parents have months of bonding time with their babies before having to deal with any behavioural issues. Foster and adoptive parents don’t have that luxury. We have to try and build relationships whilst also setting behavioural boundaries. Not easy.
In some cases, the behaviours displayed by the child are also a risk to the physical or emotional well-being of the parent. Bonding requires us to be open and engaged with our children. Feeling unsafe causes us to shut down and become emotionally (or even physically) disengaged.
The behaviours of a poorly attached child are designed to create a sense of safety for them. They will either be focused on testing out their new parent or creating as much distance from them as possible. It’s helpful for foster and adoptive parent to remember that the parent-child relationship they are seeking to create is the scariest relationship of all for their child.
4. Expectations.
Every parent creates a fantasy when waiting for their child to arrive. We dream about what they will be like, what we will be like and the wonderful life we have together ahead of us. In many cases, the fostering and adoption system encourages those unrealistic expectations (post coming soon about this).
Many foster and adoptive parents find that their reality does not meet their expectations. In order to bond with the real child living in our homes, we have to grief the loss of the hoped for parenting experience that is no longer our reality.
5. Lack of Biological Connection.
Birth parents are biologically helped in the bonding process due to the changes in their hormone levels. There is some argument to say that we are wired to bond to babies that enable the survival of our family genetics. That’s not to say that foster and adoptive parents can’t be physiologically changed in order to bond, just that it may be not so easy for us. This is a current area of research.
6. Child’s Personality.
I remember a conversation once with birth parents who were trying to decide the name of their soon-to-be-born child. In the conversation there was a lot of excitement around imagining what kind of person their daughter was going to grow up to be. They laughed about which one of them she might be like.
When our children come to us, a lot of their personality may have already been formed. Sometimes the environment they have grown up in has lead to them developing traits and values that we may find very hard to connect to.
7. Rejection.
They say that the only truly unconditional love, is the love a child has for their parent. Even children who have been severely abused by a birth parent can still be very protective of the relationship they have with them. The new parent is often viewed as a threat to that first parent-child relationship. This can result in the child being highly rejecting towards them. They may very openly state that they do not want us in their lives.
It’s very hard to bond with someone who repeatedly tells you that you aren’t wanted. The children who feel unwanted themselves tend to be the ones who do this the most.
Added to this, most of us expect to ‘lose’ our children in the future. In the case of short-term fostering there may be an unconscious desire to not bond too much as a way of protecting oneself from the future pain of loss when they move on. In the case of permanent fostering and adoption, many of us know that our children are likely to return to birth family in some way when they reach adulthood. My experience is that parents accept this cognitively but also may wish to protect themselves emotionally.
8. Fostering System Sometimes Discourages Bonding.
It’s quite common for foster children to start to call their foster parents ‘mum’ or ‘dad’. I’ve worked with a number of foster parents now who have been expressly forbidden by professionals to allow this to happen. They have been told to remind the child that they are their ‘carer’ and not their parent (check out this post for my views on terminology). In six of these cases the foster parents were approved as the permanent family for the child until s/he reached 18. In four of those, there was no ongoing contact with birth family.
I cannot begin to tell you how frustrating I find this. Children need to belong somewhere. Children can belong in more than one family. Children feeling like they don’t belong anywhere has disastrous consequences.
We need to stop sending foster parents mixed messages. Either they are to welcome the child into their home as any other member of the family (and be allowed to bond with them) or they are to view them as the placed foster child. They cannot be expected to do both.
A social worker once told me she thought a foster parent had got “too emotionally involved” with their foster child. I won’t tell you my response. I will tell you it wasn’t very therapeutic.
9. Respecting Their Birth Family.
My children have another mum. A woman who gave birth to them and was their parent for the first 6-10 years of their lives. I must recognise that the great joy I receive from being their mum is equally matched by the devastation she must feel that she can’t be.
In the early days I felt like I mustn’t do anything with my boys that might prevent them having a meaningful relationship with their birth parents. I remember a time when I took them to see their mum and one of the boys fell over. He came running towards us, cry for his mum and with grazed shins. She reached out to comfort him and he yelled “not you, my nice mum” and flung himself down on my lap. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. His mum handled it incredibly well in the moment. He never saw the devastation in her eyes, but I did. I felt so guilty.
I see this guilt in other foster and adoptive parents. This is increased by the rhetoric of the anti-adoption movement which can at times blame us for ‘stealing’ children from other parents. Whilst I personally agree that our whole fostering and adoption system needs a rethink, I feel strongly that shaming foster and adoptive parents is not a part of getting it right for the children.
My children are their own people, in their own right. They belong in relationship with me for as long as they wish that to be true. I would be delighted if they could also find a safe and loving sense of belonging with their birth family. Belonging doesn’t have to be exclusive.
10. Shame.
The task of caring for a child who’s had difficult experiences is huge. It’s understandable that parents might feel not good enough for the role. I wrote a whole book about this very topic. Shame prevents connection. Shame is a factor for many parents in the struggle to bond. The struggle to bond is often shaming for the parent. It’s very easy here to get caught in a shame spiral that is of no help to anyone.
So, as we can see, their are many different factors that may effect the bonding experience of foster and adoptive parents. What we need now is to take this information and create safe spaces for parents to explore these issues in a way that enables healing and hope.
If I’ve missed anything out, please do comment below. Also feel free to share your experiences if appropriate.
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