“ I
’m always happy to discuss This Is Us,” says Jason Weber of the nonprofit Christian Alliance for Orphans. “Just don’t ask me if it makes me cry.” Weber, who directs the alliance’s efforts to recruit and train foster families, tells me the hit NBC show offers an extremely accurate portrayal of the “real tensions that exist” for anyone involved in adoption or foster care.1Now halfway through its second season, This Is Us follows three story lines that touch on fostering and adoption. In the first, a couple loses a child at birth and adopts an abandoned baby, Randall. In the second, the adult Randall meets and develops a relationship with his dying biological father. And in the third, Randall and his wife, Beth, bring a foster child to live in their home.
The show is heartwarming. Randall was abandoned by a drug- addled father after his mother died of an overdose. That he is adopted into a loving home is itself a kind of miracle. His reunion with his “bio”
father brought many in the weekly viewing audience of 13 million to tears. “I think the relationship between Randall and his adopted par-ents and his longing for a relationship with his biological parpar-ents is spot on,” one woman wrote in a private Facebook group for adop-tive mothers. “The emotional inner battle over loyalty to both is well represented.”
This Is Us doesn’t paper over the challenges these families face.
Some viewers were shocked by a judge’s refusal to sign off on Ran-dall’s adoption because he is black and his new parents are white.
But this was not uncommon in the early 1980s, when the scene takes
place. Congress didn’t outlaw racial considerations in adoptions until 1996. Randall and Beth’s foster child, Deja, has suffered abuse, and she flinches when Randall comes too close. She frequently acts out. Every time Randall and Beth feel as if they are gaining the teenager’s trust, things go south again.
Weber is planning to show clips from the show to potential foster families. “The tense conversation that Randall and Beth have with the social worker and the internal struggle Randall has about Deja’s mom are so real and portrayed so well,” he says.2
An Indiana mother on the Facebook group wrote: “When [Randall and Beth] foster [Deja], I saw so many similarities with our teen in the beginning, especially the need to care for/give money to her mom. Or when the foster dad feels like he is the only one advocating for his fos-ter daughfos-ters well-being and yells at the [social worker]! (I’ve lifos-terally had that exact conversation.)”
Terri Moore, who has with her husband, Johnston, fostered 10 chil-dren and adopted seven, says she “thought they handled the girl’s ten-sion well . . . the fact that she was torn because she loves her mother, but was also growing attached to the foster family.”3 The Moores also work in this area—she as a court-appointed special advocate in Virginia and he as the founder of a foster care advocacy group called Home Forever.
On her blog, Foster the Family, New Jersey foster mother Jamie Care writes: “Seeing foster care and adoption on the screen like this is a gift to foster and adoptive families.” But also: “It’s a gift to the people who’ve never considered adoption for their families. It’s a gift to the people who know that foster care exists but have never even consid-ered it could have anything to do with them.”4
Other Hollywood portrayals of foster care and adoption have not been received nearly as well as This Is Us has. The 2009 film Orphan, about a childless couple that adopts, earned the ire of foster and adop-tive parents. A letter signed by leaders of 11 adoption and child-welfare groups said that the film “may impede recruitment efforts by feeding into the unconscious fears of potential foster and adoptive families that orphaned children are psychotic and unable to heal from the wounds of abuse, neglect, and abandonment.”5
36 NOT SAFE FOR KIDS
It is not that foster and adoptive parents want TV shows and mov-ies to present a rosy picture of their experiences. Many foster parents are simply not prepared for the reality. “When kids come home it’s so much more difficult, more than anyone can believe,” says Kelly Rosati, who oversees adoption and orphan care for Focus on the Family and is herself an adoptive mother. “Marriages start to fray. People wonder:
‘Why have we done this? We used to be happy.’ Their days consumed with chaos and trauma.”6
For Rosati and the families who welcome these children into their homes, the answer is not to scare people or to deceive them but simply to offer a realistic picture of the hardships and the joy that fostering a child can bring. Now they have one.
This piece is reprinted with permission from the Wall Street Journal, which originally published it on December 29, 2017.7 It has been lightly edited for this compilation.
Notes
1. Jason Weber (Christian Alliance for Orphans), in discussion with the author, December 14, 2017.
2. Weber, discussion.
3. Terri Moore, in email with the author, December 19, 2017.
4. Jamie Care, “‘This Is Us’ Isn’t Just a TV Show,” October 11, 2017, http://www.fosterthefamilyblog.com/foster-the-family-blog-1/this-is-us- isnt-just-a-tv-show.
5. Associated Press, “‘Orphan’ Horrifies Adoption Groups,” Hollywood Reporter, July 17, 2009, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/orphan- horrifies-adoption-groups-86624.
6. Kelly Rosati (Focus on the Family), in discussion with the author, December 11, 2017
7. Naomi Schaefer Riley, “‘This Is Us’ Gets Adoption and Foster Care Right,” Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/
this-is-us-gets-adoption-and-foster-care-right-1514586219.
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