English
| Please look through these characteristics of biological parents for children in foster care, and reflect on what is characteristic for the parents of your foster care child: |
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1. ORDINARY PARENTS FORCED BY CIRCUMSTANCES TO GIVE UP PARENTING Parents who could have been good caregivers can be forced by external circumstances to decide that their child is better off in foster care. The reasons for this are usually: A. Single mothers who have been expelled from their family because they became pregnant without being married, or because they were too young to use their skills as parents. B. Parents who were traumatized by circumstances: for example mothers who were raped, victims of natural disasters such as earthquakes, flooding, economic depression or losing their jobs, parents disabled by severe physical illness, or the death of one or both parents. C. Families where the child was born with a severe physical handicap and/or was born prematurely or had very low birth weight and many birth complications. D. Families where the mother had no physical contact with her baby – for example, the baby may have been isolated at a neonatal birth department, or may have been in an incubator for a long time after birth. Physical separation after birth makes it difficult for all parents to feel attached to the baby, and often causes rejection of the child.
Your reflections about the parents: |
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2.FRAGILE PARENTS A. One or both parents may be chronically unable to take care of their own lives, and they may also be more or less unable to care for their child in a secure and practical way (even though they may still love the child). In these families the child in your care will often have severe problems attaching to you because it was deprived of care as a young child (you can study this topic further in sessions 4 and 5). B. Families where the father is frequently replaced by many stepfathers (this may be a signal that the mother is unable to have long term relations to adults as well as to children). Families where the father is violent towards the wife and children. Families without a father who can be a responsible parent. C. Families where the mother (or father) herself was very much deprived and received no parenting herself as a child. Emotionally such parents can be very immature and act more like children than like parents: impulsive, unable to remember appointments, unable to plan and practice what is agreed upon, lack sense of how to behave in a social situation. D. Families where the primary caregiver (from the child was born until it was three) suffered from psychiatric problems: Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder (manio -depressive), Borderline Personality Disturbance, severe long term depression after birth (post partum depression), or birth psychosis. In short, the mother or father was troubled by psychiatric disease and was therefore unable to care for her/his young child. E. Families where one or both parents have major alcohol or drug abuse problems, and/ or are engaged in criminal activities. F. Parents who have grown up in very poor quality orphanages shortly after birth, and have received little care with many random caregivers. Some orphanages are short of staff and have problems with parenting the children in a secure way and caregivers may not have engaged in social and emotional relations with the children.
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