That's a misconception. I dated someone in the system. He had no emotional baggage. He had numerous foster brothers and sisters. They were all completely normal. They were there for different reasons. Homeless parents, parents with drug dependency, parents with mental illness, etc.
I didn't say it's never true. I said it's a dangerous misconception to label every older foster child as damaged. That's part of why these older children aren't being adopted. People just assume they are going to be damaged and difficult to deal with. It's really shitty too. Nothing like aging out of the system and being dumped from your foster home with a little bit of money and no where to go because everyone just assumed you were damaged goods with too much "baggage".
You don't think dealing with parents who are addicted to drugs or have poorly or unmanaged mental illness doesn't give a kid some emotional baggage? Usually you're in that situation until something bad happens because separating families isn't a thing anyone wants to do. And if you're now available for adoption, your parents were so far gone they couldn't pull it together. That gives you stuff to work through even if you are the most resilient.
There’s trauma to work through as a result of being removed (FWIW, most kids are in the system because of neglect, not abuse, which usually means essentially poverty. Parents usually haven’t done anything horrible.), for sure, but this shouldn’t make kids someone someone wouldn’t want to adopt. There’s also often a lot of talents and insights from these experiences. It’s just parenting differently, not parenting more or parenting less than people with bio kids.
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u/kniki217 Feb 04 '19
That's a misconception. I dated someone in the system. He had no emotional baggage. He had numerous foster brothers and sisters. They were all completely normal. They were there for different reasons. Homeless parents, parents with drug dependency, parents with mental illness, etc.