What Evangelical Christians Get Wrong about Foster Care

What is the Achilles heel of the group most likely to foster?

Practicing Christians are twice as likely as other Americans to become foster parents.¹ Caring for orphans and other vulnerable populations has long been seen as central to the Christian faith so it’s heartening to see many Christians living out these values. Even without the survey data, I could have told you that Christians are highly involved with foster care and adoption. Almost every foster/adoptive family we’ve come into contact with in our time as foster/adopt parents (7+ years now) has been Christian. The biggest non-profit organizations supporting foster and adoptive families in our region are all either explicitly faith-based or have deep connections within Christian communities. Good on Christians for showing up and getting some skin in the game.

Now for a Debbie Downer moment: I’m going to spend the rest of this essay explaining why I think some elements of conservative Christian (which I will abbreviate as CC) culture and mindset are spectacularly ill-suited for the role of foster parent. Womp womp. If it were liberal atheists who were lining up to be foster parents, I’m sure there would be plenty to critique in their approach as well but, as far as I can tell, that’s not the case. Since Christian foster parents are what I’ve observed first-hand², they’re the group for whom I have some suggestions.

A friend told me a while back that another name for unsolicited advice is “criticism.” Yep, that tracks. Even though no one has asked me for my opinion about how Christians perform as foster parents, I want to be clear that I don’t intend these observations to be a critical take-down. There’s no malice in what I’m writing here. I intend it more in the spirit of a helpful corrective. If any conservative Christians are reading this, I imagine it’s going to be hard not to feel defensive. I’m sure I would too if I were in their shoes. All I can say is that if you can stomach it, I would love for you to read this piece and just think about it a bit. If it helps, I give all readers full permission to send me their critiques of opinionated millennials, people with poor math and spatial reasoning skills, women who are constantly asking their husbands to get up and get them a glass of water right after they just sat down and whatever other groups in need of a “helpful corrective” that I might fall into.

From my opinionated millennial perspective, the primary stumbling block for Christian foster parents is this: obedience to authority is right up there near the tippy-top of the list of Christian parenting priorities. The only ones higher are making sure your kids know the Veggie Tales theme song and training them up to beat your cross-town rivals in the annual church softball league. (Those darn Methodists/Lutherans/Presbyterians/Baptists. You’ll get them next year.) Although I’m not sold on ranking obedience quite so high on the parenting priority list in general, prioritizing obedience as a foster parent is a sure recipe for trouble. Focus primarily on making foster kids do what you say because you said so and you’ll generate conflict the same way former Chicago mayor Richard Daley encouraged his people to vote, early and often.

You can see the pickle Christian foster parents are in: Christian pastors and writers tell Christian parents to teach their children obedience almost above all else. You can see examples of the sort of teaching I’m talking about here, here, here, here, and here. The reasoning³ goes like this: A Christian is to submit to God’s authority and obey Him. Kids begin to learn how to submit to God by obeying their parents. Not only that, there are Bible verses that explicitly instruct children to obey their parents (Ephesians 6:6, Colossians 3:20, Exodus 20:12.) So wouldn’t these parents be doing their foster kids a disservice if they didn’t expect them to obey the adults who are in authority over them? Not only that but what message would these parents be sending to the bio or adopted kids also in the foster home if they expect obedience from them but accept willy-nilly willfulness from the foster kids? That type of "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" special treatment is bound to end badly.

This emphasis on obedience — when carried out as part of an authoritative but not authoritarian parenting style and coupled with high levels of nurture — is not bad in and of itself. Kids who grow up in safe, loving homes can receive limits, consequences and parental demands within the context of a lived experience that has taught them to trust and rely on authority figures. They also have a secure attachment that means their sense of connection to their parents and identity are not threatened by rules, and consequences. Kids may (will) resist, complain, argue or otherwise try to get around parents rules,⁴ but the parent-child bond is not threatened by loving parents imposing reasonable limits. Kids from hard places do not have these lived experiences to teach them to trust and accept limits placed by safe adults. Rather, they have experiences that teach them things like:

• When I cry, no one comes to help. I can’t trust adults to meet my needs. I have to control my environment myself to make sure I get what I need. I won’t do what adults tell me because I’ll lose control.

• The adults I loved and trusted hurt me. If I let someone get close again, they’ll hurt me again. I’m going to push them away by resisting and disobeying so I’ll never have to risk getting hurt.

• I want to get close but I need to know you won’t abandon me like other adults have. The only way I can know that for sure is to act as bad as I possibly can and see if you still love me. So I’m going to break every rule and disobey every instruction.

• I miss my family. I’m so angry that I was taken away. If I cooperate with the foster family, it’s like betraying my real family so I’ll never do what they want, no matter what.

It can be challenging for any foster parent to adopt a trauma-informed parenting mindset. But it’s particularly challenging for conservative Christians for whom obedience has a high cultural value.

Underlying the CC emphasis on obedience is the religious conviction that sin is at the root of disobedience. Conservative Christians truly believe that it is their duty to demand obedience because not to do so is to reinforce those sinful behaviors. Unlike Dr. Becky, CC parenting paradigms don’t think of kids as “good inside.” Multiple sources lay this out with titles like “Are Our Kids “Good Inside”? Christian moms react to Dr. Becky’s parenting advice”; “Are Kids Good Inside? A Christian Parenting Perspective”; “Is Gentle Parenting Biblical?”; and the very on-the-nose “Love Your ‘Good Kid’ Enough to Show Them They’re Bad.” One Christian who grew up in a very conservative Christian home describes her parents’ attitude this way: “We love you, we want you to have a good life and walk with Jesus. In order to do that, we feel it’s our job to identify sins in your life.”⁵ From this perspective, common kid problem behaviors (lying, hitting, refusing to share, self-administered hair cuts⁶, etc.) are not benign; they are indicative of the child’s detestable sin nature. If the cause of these behaviors is sinfulness and if parents allow children to persist in sin by not requiring them to change their behavior, then they are pushing them further and further away from salvation. CC foster parents see the foster child’s religious salvation as their top priority and responsibility. This sense of high stakes gives CC foster parents a sense of urgency in making the child obey. Combined with the trauma-related relational dynamics described above, this attitude can generate intense conflict that, sadly, can be counter-productive to the foster parents’ goal of supporting and guiding the foster kid in their care.

The challenge for conservative Christian parents is to accept a parenting paradigm that feels counter-intuitive and even wrong in order to serve the longer term goal of building trusting, connected relationship that will eventually give them influence to effect changes in the foster kid’s lives.

Foster parenting from this mindset can do a lot of damage to the kids in care. Traditional behaviorist punishment and incentive based parenting models do not work with kids who have experienced early life trauma.⁷ Consider this quote from Honestly Adoption founder Mike Berry, “Once, I caught one of the children in our care in a straight-up lie. When I asked her why she lied, she just stared at me. I continued to question her…and question her…and question her. As I was raised, no response meant defiance, and thus, you keep questioning until you get a response. So I did. Her eyes started darting around the room. She wouldn’t look at me. She would open her mouth to speak but nothing came out. I’d love to tell you my heart gave way and I stopped. Not the case. I became more frustrated. Finally I’d had enough and marched her off to her room. The night was over for her. In my mind, she was content with her “bad behavior” and needed a swift consequence—time away from others to “think” about it. For several more years, I parented with this concrete thinking.

I was raised this way, and I would parent this way too! However, I was never starving. I never bounced from foster home to foster home. I never witnessed domestic violence. I never grew up in an orphanage or group home. My mom and dad always took care of me, and more importantly, they were always there for me. Children who experienced trauma (especially early on in their life) are missing this key element. The result is deep cavernous wounds, unmet needs, and survival living. When I finally realized this, it changed the way I communicated with the children in our care, and how I reacted to their behavior.”⁸

A child with attachment damage who has learned through life experience that adults can’t be trusted is more likely to battle for control than relent and obey. For these kids, that loss of control feels like it has life-and-death consequences. They are determined that no consequence, no punishment, no threat, no yelling, no anger and no incentive will cause them to obey these state-appointed foster parents that are supposed to take care of them. These kids will “blow out” and leave the placement rather than obey. At that point, any opportunity foster parents have to positively impact that kid’s life is lost. More likely they have done the opposite by reinforcing wounding messages the child already carries. Any form of discipline that doesn’t speak to the underlying trauma and attachment issues driving the foster kid’s behavior will place more and more obstacles in the way of connection with foster parents. In contrast, methodologies like TBRI and connected or attachment-focused discipline are trauma-informed. They’re designed to heal attachment damage while also changing problem behaviors. If foster parents can parent this way, they can create the conditions for real healing and growth for the kids in their care. More information about strategies for connection-based, trauma-informed discipline can be found here and here.

CC foster parents might object: “These types of trauma-informed models are no substitute for the healing and transformation that Jesus Christ offers.” Other variations on this theme: “What this child really needs is Jesus,” “The only thing that will really make a difference in their life is Jesus,” “Only Jesus can heal this child.” These sorts of comments are ubiquitous in conservative Christian settings. CC foster parents set religious faith and modern psychology in opposition to each other. The unspoken belief is that by pursuing secular modalities like talk therapy, CBT, EMDR, etc. and/or prescription medications, they are not looking to Jesus as the source of the healing. Many early pioneers in the field of psychology were skeptical of religiosity and sometimes explicitly anti-Christian (I’m looking at you, Sigmund) so it feels for many Christians that they have to declare their loyalties. One cannot serve both God & BF Skinner.⁹

It’s easy to find examples of this very common attitude: “In addition to these broader ethical issues, many Christians are rightfully skeptical about theories of humanity that have been developed by atheists”; “A lot of Christians ask, Isn't the Bible enough for us? Why should we trust the ideas of those who reject God’s truth? Should mature, obedient Christians ever need psychological insight?”; “Christians see the Church and psychology as competitors, and their loyalty to the church prevents them from seeking out non-Christian therapy, psychological, or psychiatric help.”; “Christian psychology should also take seriously the consideration scientific psychology, so-called secular psychology, but with this caveat of the greater scripture guiding us ultimately.”

CCs are creating a false dichotomy that portrays secular psychology and evidence-based healing modalities as incompatible with religious faith. Similar to the way practitioners of Christian Science reject medical care, some conservative Christians will not explore tools available to them because they perceive it as indicative of a lack of faith and biblical worldview.¹⁰ The impact this attitude has on foster kids is tremendously negative. The prayers of a Christian Scientist are not effective ways to cure cancer or remove a bowel obstruction (examples from the Guardian article linked in the footnote), and Bible-reading and church-going do not undo the damage done to body and brain by traumatic events. What’s more, the less-informed CC foster parents are about trauma and its impacts, the more likely they are to misinterpret their foster kid’s behavior and persevere in self-defeating parenting patterns. As evidence of how common this problem is in CC foster parenting circles, consider two podcast episodes put out by Honestly Adoption titled, “Is It Disobedience Or Survival?” and “Is It Disobedience Or Lack Of Executive Functioning?” Foster parents who punish their foster kids for perceived disobedience can reinforce the unhealthy survival strategies they already employ rather than supporting healing or teaching any replacement behaviors. There are Christian psychologists and trauma-informed practitioners who do model what it can look like to integrate religious faith with modern scientific frameworks but at a popular, folk level, the belief in their incompatibility persists.

Another push factor that causes CC foster parents to focus on obedience: peer pressure. Not for the kids, for the parents. There is immense pressure on CC foster parents l to have their kids’ behavior live up to the community’s standards. On the one hand, this is a universal desire. No parent intentionally directs their children towards behaviors that they see as problematic. There’s no one out there coaching a younger sibling, “Okay, you see how your older sister has perfected that dramatic eye roll when I ask her to do her homework? I want you to watch how she does that so you can learn. These skills don’t just appear, you know. You gotta practice if you want to get good at something.” On the other hand, conservative religious cultures – more so than secular culture at large — operate according to a well-defined and widely mutually upheld set of social norms. Violation of these norms has social ramifications that are damaging to relationships and reputations. To their credit, conservative Christian communities put a huge importance on the role of parents as teachers and guides to their children. They take parenting very seriously. The behavior of children is understood to reflect back on parents. To raise a child who violates or rejects the community’s norms is to invite social judgment and possible social stigma. Conservative Christian families might also be less likely to want their kids socializing with the siblings of a foster kid or the foster kid themself if they are displaying norm-violating behaviors. For these reasons, separate from any other concerns, there is considerable motivation for CC foster parents to attempt to exert control over their foster kid’s behavior while in their home.

Conservative Christians reading this (if anyone has made it this far, that is) could claim that I am creating a strawman by describing their parenting approach as solely focused on behavior management and compliance. By no means am I suggesting that they care only about behaviors. Conservative Christian parents care deeply about their children’s’ inner world, their feelings and beliefs. Christians understand their purpose as parents as guiding a child’s heart to faith, not merely leading a child to engage in desired behaviors. A very popular Christian parenting book’s title alludes to exactly that, parents want to “shepherd a child’s heart.” A 2024 article from Christianity today describes the role of a parent as “teaching our children in word and example, preparing them to become thoughtful believers themselves.” Another article from Focus On The Family even specifically identifies the error of focusing only on compliance: “As parents, it can seem far easier to seek control over our kids and their lives. From decision-making to discernment to their friends and activities, we can quickly slip into the mode of parenting defined by control.” Another article calls out the tendency I mentioned earlier to attempt to control a child’s behavior primarily out of a concern for how we may be perceived as a result: “Reputation parenting is primarily concerned with the spiritual reputation of the parent. We do what we do as a parent with the goal of having others see us as a respectable Christian parent. We seek compliments from others for how great a parent we are and how well behaved our children are.” CC foster parents I’ve known think with great complexity and care about the duty they have to the kids in their care. They are not robots focused on policing behavior, they genuinely want to win a child’s heart. Unfortunately, traditional, obedience focused parenting doesn’t support that goal but rather serves as an obstacle that blocks connection and growth.

When foster parents insist on compliance as the prerequisite for positive relationship, they fail to build trust and safety. There’s so much to be gained if they would set aside some (not all!) behavioral expectations in the short-term in order to focus on building a connected relationship with their foster kids. Foster parents often have to give in order to get. In the real world, this often looks like ignoring issues of dress, language, food choices, and amount/type of device use while the foundation of the relationship is being established. Although this can frustrate CC foster parents who feel like they are betraying their values, it’s the only option likely to create positive results. CC foster parents need to play a long game. By parenting with wise flexibility, which is not to say without any rules or boundaries, they can create a sense of trust and connection with their foster child. As that connection grows, the influence the foster parents have in the kid’s life will grow too. If their ultimate goal is to lead their foster kids to salvation, they have a better chance of achieving that goal through authoritative (but not authoritarian), trauma-informed parenting.

Just being real: committing to that parent style will mean making some very counter-cultural choices. If you’re the parent to the kid dropping f-bombs at youth group, you’re gonna get judged. Concerned parents who perceive the foster kid as a threat to their own child’s innocence or purity will somehow forget to invite your family to their backyard BBQ. Friends who listen to you vent about the challenges of therapeutic parenting are probably thinking, and likely saying, “Maybe you need to try being a little more strict? These kids need discipline in their lives.” You’ll feel misunderstood. But if these choices result in a meaningful connection that changes the course of a foster kid’s life, it’s more than worth it. I think conservative Christians deserve recognition and praise for being more willing than most to take on the care of a foster child. It’s not an easy road. I don’t fault them for having a learning curve as they attempt to adapt to an entirely different style of parenting. We’ve made our fair share of mistakes and then some. No one gets out of foster parenting (or any kind of parenting) batting 1000. Nonetheless, if their desire is to truly serve the foster kids in their care, they need to get uncomfortable and challenge their cultural norms and practices.

1. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/new-bpc-harris-polling-data-on-religion-and-child-welfare/

2. And since as a Christian myself, I have a vested interest in the behavior of my co-religionists

3. And I really do have sympathy for it! I certainly expect my kids to generally obey what I say.

4. 90s TV sitcoms leads me to believe that the primary way they do this is by sneaking out of their bedroom window using the ladder put their by Kimmy Gibler or Harvey Kinkle.

5. Sons of Patriarchy podcast, “Family Affairs: Abuse in the CREC, Part 4”, 11/20/24

6. Okay, that one’s a joke.

7. Although unfortunately some agencies recommend it anyway: https://www.agapeaz.org/foster-care/9-ways-to-discipline-foster-and-adopted-children/

8. https://honestlyadoption.com/why-traditional-parenting-methods-wont-work-with-children-who-have-experienced-trauma/

9. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/alive-inside/201409/b-f-skinner-s-struggle-god

10. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/06/christian-science-church-medicine-death-horror-of-my-fathers-last-days