After Kate posted a comment on Queercents, I checked out her blog, Foster Mamas and learned about her role as a foster parent. I thought she might an opinion about queers spending too much money to make a baby, when there are so many kids in need of parents. I figure she’d have something thought-provoking to say. She did. These are her words…

KateMy wife and I have been talking about trying to have a baby for three years. We discussed adoption while she battled her way through her last year of grad school. We dove deep into whether to have a known or anonymous sperm donor while I quit work to finish college. We drove to New Jersey to meet a guy before we decided to go with a sperm bank and then we pored over donor profiles and price lists for those tiny, tiny vials. We have dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed some more. Three years is a long time to do nothing but dream.

The trouble was that two very underpaid social workers with staggering educational debt and a dash of wedding thrown in could not a baby-budget make. Considering the unbelievable prices of sperm and fertility procedures, I wondered to my wife whether we could buy some kind of ‘œgay kid insurance’ in case our grandchildren need some upfront funds. As one who cannot bear to spend $20 on shoes, the sky-high costs of trying to conceive or private adoption, and then childcare seemed so insurmountable that dreaming was becoming depressing. If only bringing a child into our family could be free (or nearly) and if only someone else would pay for the daycare!

Fortunately for us, we had both considered foster parenting before, and knew that if we decided to do it, some of our costs would be covered while we cared for a child who needed a family. We figured that we’d still have some hefty expenses, but fostering was accessible where other avenues were not, and we wanted a child so very much. So we took a class for eight weeks, completed a home study, and accepted the first child that the Department of Social Services called us about. That was last September, and since then we have fostered three children (including the one we have now). We have also received a thorough education in a popular mystery- the costs and benefits of foster parenting.

Since many people wonder about the numbers, let me tell you that we receive $17.10 per day to care for each child we foster, plus $107 quarterly for clothes, and $100 for Christmas presents. These reimbursements vary drastically from state to state, and also according to a child’s age and special needs, so this cannot be used as a generalization- it only represents a non-special needs toddler in Massachusetts today. At the moment, our foster son’s daycare is provided via a voucher (which are not always available). So, if we had this child for one full year, that would be a total of $6,769 paid back to us as his foster parents.

Several months ago someone left some comments at my blog insinuating that foster parents (us in particular) are gold diggers. This is such a popular misconception that I took the time to detail our expenses, and here’s what I came up with:

Adding up the expensive diapers, wipes, butt paste, food for the world’s pickiest eater, band-aids and ointments, shampoo and soap, toothpaste, clothes and shoes we can’t resist buying because they’re just so cute on her, books and toys, bedding, a great deal of extra dish soap, laundry detergent and dryer sheets, electricity, and gas for the car, plus loads of cash shelled out on the weekends for outings and rewards, and money paid to our babysitters once or twice a month if we’re lucky, among all the other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. . . I know it costs at least $35 a day to foster a toddler. More than twice what we get reimbursed.

And those are just the day-to-day expenses. We also spent about $700 on furniture and travel gear just to get started, and faced the hidden expenses of lost work hours and mileage that was not covered by DSS (taking off half-days twice a month for our foster daughter’s play therapy, leaving work early when she was sick, staying home sick ourselves when we caught whatever she had- every time!). Now that we also bought our first home, in part to better accommodate foster children, we also pay almost twice as much for our housing. In short, foster parenting is not a baby-bill panacea. It is still very expensive. Our first foster child was a part of our family for about a year, and I would estimate that we lost about $6,000 caring for her. This would come as no surprise to the University of Maryland researchers who released a report in October showing that 28 states would have to increase their reimbursement rates by more than 50% to cover the cost of raising a foster child. But we love these kids, and it’s really not about money, is it? Is it expensive? Yes. Less so than ‘œhaving a baby of our own’? By a lot. Worth it? Definitely. But there’s another cost.

Doing foster care has cost me a daughter. There is no greater cost than that, and a lost six thousand dollars pales in comparison. Of course, there is a complicated emotional economy to parenting of any kind, with the benefits of love and loyalty and the magic influence of childhood, balanced against the expenses of stress, health, and a toll on your marriage if you have one, but that is universal. The special element of fostering is simply loss. It would be impossible to tell you how much I love our former foster daughter, except to say that if you are a parent, then you’ll know by how much you love your own children. It doesn’t matter what biology or legality or even physical absence have to say- she was and is absolutely our baby. She and I are melded together in a way that only ever exists between loving parent and child. Her departure was the worst moment of my life and twelve weeks later I still cry for her frequently. This is not to say that every foster parent-child connection is so profound (indeed, I feel very differently toward the other two we have had), but somewhere along the way that little girl became my little girl, and now I know the cost of grief.

Yet, here I sit, writing while listening intently to the quiet in our foster son’s bedroom, making sure he is sleeping soundly. We did do it again. I am glad he is here. I hope to have another one soon. We’re lucky to be visiting with our former foster daughter every so often. We’ve met some truly amazing people along the way. We also now know how demanding parenting is so that we will be ready for the lifetime commitment when it comes along. And yes, we’re still dreaming. And yes, we’re still pretty far from realizing those dreams (even farther due to our six grand down the hole last year!) For all that though, we became moms where before it was impossible. Now no matter what happens, no matter how much we’ve lost or gained in other ways, we have a daughter out there in the world. We never had one of those before.

More about Kate
‘œfoster (verb): to back, champion, support, uphold, entertain, harbor, house, lodge, shelter, accommodate, assist, favor, help, oblige, nurse, advance’

Kate and her wife are all of the above. She blogs at Foster Mamas.