Babies coming through: Co-parenting foster kids with your mom
It is not unusual for an older child to help care for younger siblings. When the adults in a household are outnumbered by children, the help becomes essential. Olders often keep a watchful eye on youngers while an adult makes a meal or goes to the bathroom. Olders may walk youngers home from school and get them a snack before an adult comes home from work. Olders may babysit youngers so adults can go out for dinner or a movie or other “grownup time.” I’ve talked with many older siblings from big families who had fairly significant responsibilities for their siblings or were tasked with household chores like meal preparation and laundry — especially if they were girls — which enabled adults to care for younger siblings. But the role Amber Butts played in her family went beyond those tasks. Amber was a co-parent with her mother.
“I love that I come from a long line of people who have created safe spaces for other people who might not have access to certain resources,” Amber says with pride. Her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all took in and cared for children, in addition to those they birthed. Sometimes the children were biological relatives, like nieces and nephews, and sometimes they weren’t.
As a young child, Amber lived with her grandmother, mother, and some aunts, uncles, and cousins — not all of whom were blood relatives. The mashup of biology and choice to make family was a long-standing tradition in Amber’s family, as it is in many Black families. Amber reflects, “It’s something that has been in my family for so long that I have aunts and uncles that we’re not sure if they’re actually biologically related, especially my great aunts and uncles. My family is very mixed, with all different ethnicities and identities. Looking back at some photos, we’re like, ‘They could be family, technically, or they could be chosen family. We’re not actually sure. It doesn’t even matter.’”
After a fire in Amber’s home, she and her mother, Lisa, moved to their own place. Even then, Amber’s aunt and uncle, who were her age and raised with her like siblings, split their time between Amber’s and Amber’s grandmother’s (their mom) home. Though they all moved to separate places, the family functioned as it always had. “There was always a newborn in the home,” Amber explains, “or maybe a kid from down the street who was going through a rough patch.” Amber’s mother and grandmother would insist on giving parents in their community a break, sometimes as an intervention to protect children.
“My mom’s always been into taking care of children, since she was a child,” Amber explains. “Her passion is children.” When Amber was a teenager, Lisa decided to become a foster parent. She was working in a day care and running an after-school program with Amber out of their home that served kids in the neighborhood and in their family. Both took early childhood development classes, and Lisa completed the process to become a licensed foster parent. Initially, Amber and Lisa’s agreement about their specific childcare roles was not deeply defined. Amber remembers, “I’m in high school. I’m also working and stuff and she was like, ‘You know, we’re going to have some babies coming in here soon.’”
After fostering children for a couple years, Amber and Lisa became much more explicit about their roles, in a way that likely few romantic partners talk about their child-rearing principles. “I told her, ‘This is not effective because we have different ways of communicating and concepts of discipline.’ I like to let kids know, ‘So, this is my expectation of a thing, and there are house chores and things like that, and if you don’t do a house chore, there’s consequences. Maybe we won’t take that walk today because you didn’t make up your bed,’ or whatever. Whereas my mom’s like, ‘Mmm, yeah, I mean, you didn’t make up your bed. It’s day three. Please make up your bed.’ We noticed the kids were kind of confused because they knew my reaction and my mom’s reaction, but our reactions together were just very confusing. So, we sat down and talked about the roles that best suited us.”
Amber took on the pieces that involved creating structure, such as supporting with homework and setting expectations around chores. She also did most of the cooking. Lisa was more about nurturing and getting kids where they needed to go, like school or outings. Theirs was not a rigid delineation — sometimes, Lisa cooked and Amber took on the nurturing.
While this kind of mother-daughter relationship is unusual, it felt right to Amber and Lisa. “It wasn’t weird for us to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m co-parenting with my mom,’ or ‘I’m co-parenting with my daughter.’ My mom was like, ‘This is my partner in crime. We do everything together.’”
Amber believes co-parenting made their relationship even stronger. “My mom and I have always been very close, but I think there’s a different type of closeness when you’re raising children together. You have to be more accountable — for things you’re saying and doing. You have to have clear communication.”
The first child to come into their home was two-year-old Brandy. She only stayed for two months and was placed with her grandmother. “Sometimes, what ends up happening is short-term while there’s trials going on and stuff like that,” Amber explains. “There were a couple of court cases where a judge needed to decide where to place Brandy — like, if she should be placed in permanent foster care or if she had family members that could assist.”
Amber admires her mother’s commitment to fostering kids, especially since caring for a child who could leave at any time can be heartbreaking. “My mom’s amazing,” muses Amber, “because it is so hard for her to have a child you care for to leave. And she chooses to do it all the time with that risk.” Amber recounts, “A few years ago, we had a little girl named Izzie who came into our home when she was 18-months, and she was with us for two and a half years. Then there were just literally one or two meetings with a newly-married couple who wanted children. The caseworker decided to introduce Izzie to them, she met them twice, and then they adopted her. It was really hard on my family because Izzie was such a core of our unit, and it was so sudden. We didn’t feel like they were greatly matched, and we wanted her to stay with us. But it wasn’t up to us and it wasn’t up to her. That was hard, because I think they didn’t allow her any agency. She didn’t have the capacity to name what was going on for her and say, ‘I want to stay with mom. I don’t want to be with The People.’ Izzie referred to them as ‘The People.’”
She continues, “My mom is really invested in parents being able to care for their children. She’ll offer resources and remind them of classes they need, and stuff like that, so they can be better prepared to care for the kid. She does it in a way that’s not condescending or anything, which is such a gift.”
Joaquin came to their home when he was just five days old and stayed for five months. “It was multiply bittersweet,” Amber says. “He was able to be placed back with his mom because my mom and I tried to help support her and encourage her to deal with some mental health stuff. She was able to do that, so he was placed back with her, which is great. He’s two now, and we still get pictures.”
Amber and Lisa work to stay in touch with the children who move out of their home, but it doesn’t always happen. Amber clarifies, “If children are placed back with their parents — which is something my mom is, like, super focused on, so it happens at least half of the time — it seems like the parents kind of want to let that be. Like, the kids’ foster care was a bump in the road, so they’re wanting to focus on their children’s lives and their own, which makes sense. The hardest part is when we don’t hear from them, especially around the holidays.”
Some of the kids have become permanent members of the household. Amber was 23 when they adopted nine-month old twins who were born three months prematurely. “They were really tiny,” she says. “They could each fit in your hand.” The twins, now five years old, were dropped off late at night at Amber and Lisa’s home with very little instruction about how to care for them. Amber’s reflection on the foster care system aligns with Tracy Hanna’s, who was recently featured in an All Our Families story. Amber laments, “Social workers are overworked and there aren’t a lot of resources for foster children. We’d get debriefed somewhat, but not fully on what some of the kids had experienced, or on triggers or anything like that.”
The twins had special care needs because they’d been born early. While caring for two sickly infants was challenging, Amber says that, more than anything, “They kind of just fit in our family.” And everyone pitches in to care for them. “My grandma would watch them and read them stories all the time. My aunts and uncles and cousins will come to the house or pick them up and take them out, which is great because they’re twins.”
Lisa is in the process of adopting another child, who is three, while also fostering his older sisters. In the last decade, she’s had 22 children come in and out of her home. Amber, who is 28, moved out of her mom’s home about a year ago to focus more on building her life with her partner and focusing less on parenting. But she’s clear she wants to raise kids in the future and thinks a lot about how she will do it. “I would adopt,” she says. “I don’t think my heart is built for foster care. I do also want to have biological children — with a partner and my community with me.”
This piece is part of Family Story’s All Our Families story-telling project.
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