The term foster care refers to the temporary care service given to children who cannot live with their homes with their families. Foster care mainly provides a family and their children with an alternative shelter when they find it unsafe living in their homes. In other cases, where their own parents reject the children or when they lack a family. This is because most children desire parental love and care when they are growing. Parents play critical roles in shaping children’s character, socialization, and in the provision of basic needs. Life without responsible parents can be challenging. This article mainly discusses whether adoptive parents should be paid for their roles in taking care of adopted children.
Purpose of the Study
The majority of adoptive parents as well as those expecting to adopt a child have to spend their money not only on the application process but throughout their lives, as long as the child is under their care. Therefore, it has been argued whether it is right to pay such parents for their adopted children’s care services. This study purposely seeks to show the history of foster care board payments, the rationalized and gendered history of the progress state, and the scholarship of the sociology of money.
Research Questions
This study was based on the following four research questions.
- Is foster care licensing and assessment critical in the process of child adoption?
- Which gender should be given the roles of foster parenting in child adoption?
- What is the influence of adoptive parents on the adopted children?
- What led to the born of the City Adoption Program?
Methods Used to Evaluate Research Questions
The methods used were; observation, use of questionnaires, and personal interviews. To achieve the main objectives of the study, the mixed methods research methodology was used. The mixed-method is the most preferred because of it gives room for flexibility in the engagement between respondents and researchers (Beach & Kaas, 2020). The target area was Kids First, a private, state-contracted child welfare agency. I conducted field observations and could clearly conclude that most adoptive parents needed money and not genuine child care out of true love. Questionnaires were used which contained research questions, especially in the local areas. Personal interviewing of the people who had fostered children and the workers who worked in the foster care system. I also came to know that the City Adoption Program came in to increase foster care adoptions.
Key Findings and Concepts Learned
During the study, I came up with the following key findings. I strongly support the profiteering convention, which is unavoidable since the child welfare system has used board payments to foster parenting from the past. The issues surrounding child enabling are stereotyping, profiteering parenthood, and racialization (Hardesty, 2018). The intermingling of the moral orientation to family and current policies which has later given caregiving roles to minorities and women. The first concepts I have learned from the article are the money and social relationship. The monetary exchanges and the social-economic systems in which they occur shape the form and structure of social relationships in society. The family is the central unit that creates effective bonds to bind them. The concept of social norms and market values are very constructive in the community. They shape an individual’s character enabling them to fit in the society. The Knowledge Informed Question was; is it right to pay adoptive parents for the foster care services they offer?
References
Beach, D., & Kaas, J. G. (2020). The great divides: Incommensurability, the impossibility of mixed-methodology, and what to do about it. International Studies Review, 22(2), 214-235.
Hardesty, M. (2018). “It’s not a job!” Foster care board payments and the logic of the profiteering parent. Social Service Review, 92(1), 93-133.