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agonyaunt2022-07-25 11:31 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-07-25 11:31 am
Dear Prudence: Two on Child Custody
First: My Girlfriend Put Her Little Sister in Foster Care When Their Parents Died.
Dear Prudence,
I have been dating “Rowan” for almost six months. I knew Rowan had lost her parents really young, but I just now found out she has a sister. Basically, their dad died in an accident when Rowan was 13 and her sister “Rue” was a baby. Then when Rowan was 20, their mom got cancer and died a year later. Rue was 8 and Rowan allowed her to be put in foster care. Rowan wasn’t in college or anything, she’d been working and supporting herself since 18. She says child services tried to place Rue with her, and she said no. She says Rue was a nice, normal kid and she didn’t hate her or anything. She just wanted to enjoy her twenties instead of raising a kid.
Rowan seems to think this was a totally normal and okay choice to make, and doesn’t get why I’m horrified. Currently Rowan and Rue are in touch but not close. Rue aged out of the foster system a year or so ago. She’s getting by on her own, although from the sound of things she’s possibly some kind of sex worker. Rowan doesn’t seem to want to discuss Rue. I can intuit, though, that Rue blames her for how hard her life was in the system and is now, but Rowan doesn’t accept that blame.
My biggest issue is I’m about 70 percent sure I’m going to want at least one kid in the next 10-ish years. Before I found out about Rue, Rowan had said she’d be down with that. But is there really any chance she’d be an okay mom? Do I need to worry about her abandoning our kid if something happened to me? How can I begin to talk to her about this? And should I even try? Or is someone who would do what she did, and still defend it years later, a terrible person I can maybe enjoy sexytimes with, but shouldn’t plan a long-term relationship?
— Aghast in Atlanta
Dear Aghast in Atlanta,
What Rowan did in her 20s isn’t necessarily an indicator of what she’d do in her 30s, should a kid enter the picture, but I don’t think the issue is about potential problems as much as it’s about current ones. You’ve got to ask yourself if this action is a deal breaker for you because it occurred, not because of what it connotes. Rowan has been through a lot and it’s hard, if not impossible, to put yourself in her mindset when she was 20. But the choice indicates a big difference in the ways that you two see the world. You owe it to yourself to ask if this difference is insurmountable. Now, you’ve only been dating six months and your potential kid is perhaps a decade away, so there’s a lot of ground to cover between then and now. But this incident is popping up as a red flag for you and you should work through it. This is tricky, because Rowan may feel that you’re using her personal tragedy against her. For this reason, it might be helpful to have this conversation with a couple’s therapist, who can help keep you both in the present, rather than the past or the future.
Second: I Think I’m About to Enter a Nasty Custody Battle … With My Mother.
Q. Older Sister: My mother “Stella” had me at 15. My grandparents raised me, and Stella was gone for most of my childhood. She got married when I was 15 and had my half-sister “Jane.” I went to school out of state and didn’t see much of Jane until her dad died when she was 10. Stella reacted poorly—she dumped Jane at my grandparents for four months without any contact. I moved back in to help with Jane. We got very close.
Stella showed up again and promised to seek grief counseling. What she actually did was join a support group and immediately remarry a widower with three younger kids. She adopted the younger two. Jane didn’t react well. She fought with everyone and even ran away once, and her grades tanked. And last month, I got a hysterical phone call from Jane…
Her stepfather hit her. I couldn’t reach Stella at all. So I drove five hours to get Jane. The right side of her face was completely swollen. I told Jane to pack a bag and come with me. Stella tried to stop me and “explain.” I told her Jane could come with me now or we could get the authorities involved. Jane has been staying with me ever since, and she wants to stay permanently. Her other grandparents live out of state and want Jane to live with them. Stella keeps making excuses about what happened and blaming Jane for acting out.
Our last conversation she told me I couldn’t possibly be ready to be a mother; I told her I couldn’t be a worse one than she was to me. I am not sure if I am ready for this. I live alone and work requires me to travel a lot. Jane needs security and supervision. We found a therapist, but summer is almost over. What should I do?
Your situation may not be an ideal one for Jane, but as you point out, it sounds like the best one available. For your part, you should make sure you have a strong enough support system to help you and to help Jane, if you two keep this arrangement going. For Jane’s part, you’ll want to reach out to the state to find out what your options are for obtaining custody. This would, of course, involve authorities, but you’re likely to find that that’s going to be your best option for accessing services, acting as Jane’s medical representative, getting her into school, etc. There are structures set up for situations like this—for instance, familial fostering—so see if you can take advantage of them.
Additionally, we had a question about guardianship come up last week and a few readers wrote in with information about guardianship assistance, which varies by state but which might also be able to help you and Jane. Here’s one website with information, with a big thank you to the reader who sent it in.
https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/adoption/adopt-assistance/?CWIGFunctionsaction=adoptionByState:main.getAnswersByQuestion&questionID=14
Dear Prudence,
I have been dating “Rowan” for almost six months. I knew Rowan had lost her parents really young, but I just now found out she has a sister. Basically, their dad died in an accident when Rowan was 13 and her sister “Rue” was a baby. Then when Rowan was 20, their mom got cancer and died a year later. Rue was 8 and Rowan allowed her to be put in foster care. Rowan wasn’t in college or anything, she’d been working and supporting herself since 18. She says child services tried to place Rue with her, and she said no. She says Rue was a nice, normal kid and she didn’t hate her or anything. She just wanted to enjoy her twenties instead of raising a kid.
Rowan seems to think this was a totally normal and okay choice to make, and doesn’t get why I’m horrified. Currently Rowan and Rue are in touch but not close. Rue aged out of the foster system a year or so ago. She’s getting by on her own, although from the sound of things she’s possibly some kind of sex worker. Rowan doesn’t seem to want to discuss Rue. I can intuit, though, that Rue blames her for how hard her life was in the system and is now, but Rowan doesn’t accept that blame.
My biggest issue is I’m about 70 percent sure I’m going to want at least one kid in the next 10-ish years. Before I found out about Rue, Rowan had said she’d be down with that. But is there really any chance she’d be an okay mom? Do I need to worry about her abandoning our kid if something happened to me? How can I begin to talk to her about this? And should I even try? Or is someone who would do what she did, and still defend it years later, a terrible person I can maybe enjoy sexytimes with, but shouldn’t plan a long-term relationship?
— Aghast in Atlanta
Dear Aghast in Atlanta,
What Rowan did in her 20s isn’t necessarily an indicator of what she’d do in her 30s, should a kid enter the picture, but I don’t think the issue is about potential problems as much as it’s about current ones. You’ve got to ask yourself if this action is a deal breaker for you because it occurred, not because of what it connotes. Rowan has been through a lot and it’s hard, if not impossible, to put yourself in her mindset when she was 20. But the choice indicates a big difference in the ways that you two see the world. You owe it to yourself to ask if this difference is insurmountable. Now, you’ve only been dating six months and your potential kid is perhaps a decade away, so there’s a lot of ground to cover between then and now. But this incident is popping up as a red flag for you and you should work through it. This is tricky, because Rowan may feel that you’re using her personal tragedy against her. For this reason, it might be helpful to have this conversation with a couple’s therapist, who can help keep you both in the present, rather than the past or the future.
Second: I Think I’m About to Enter a Nasty Custody Battle … With My Mother.
Q. Older Sister: My mother “Stella” had me at 15. My grandparents raised me, and Stella was gone for most of my childhood. She got married when I was 15 and had my half-sister “Jane.” I went to school out of state and didn’t see much of Jane until her dad died when she was 10. Stella reacted poorly—she dumped Jane at my grandparents for four months without any contact. I moved back in to help with Jane. We got very close.
Stella showed up again and promised to seek grief counseling. What she actually did was join a support group and immediately remarry a widower with three younger kids. She adopted the younger two. Jane didn’t react well. She fought with everyone and even ran away once, and her grades tanked. And last month, I got a hysterical phone call from Jane…
Her stepfather hit her. I couldn’t reach Stella at all. So I drove five hours to get Jane. The right side of her face was completely swollen. I told Jane to pack a bag and come with me. Stella tried to stop me and “explain.” I told her Jane could come with me now or we could get the authorities involved. Jane has been staying with me ever since, and she wants to stay permanently. Her other grandparents live out of state and want Jane to live with them. Stella keeps making excuses about what happened and blaming Jane for acting out.
Our last conversation she told me I couldn’t possibly be ready to be a mother; I told her I couldn’t be a worse one than she was to me. I am not sure if I am ready for this. I live alone and work requires me to travel a lot. Jane needs security and supervision. We found a therapist, but summer is almost over. What should I do?
Your situation may not be an ideal one for Jane, but as you point out, it sounds like the best one available. For your part, you should make sure you have a strong enough support system to help you and to help Jane, if you two keep this arrangement going. For Jane’s part, you’ll want to reach out to the state to find out what your options are for obtaining custody. This would, of course, involve authorities, but you’re likely to find that that’s going to be your best option for accessing services, acting as Jane’s medical representative, getting her into school, etc. There are structures set up for situations like this—for instance, familial fostering—so see if you can take advantage of them.
Additionally, we had a question about guardianship come up last week and a few readers wrote in with information about guardianship assistance, which varies by state but which might also be able to help you and Jane. Here’s one website with information, with a big thank you to the reader who sent it in.
https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/adoption/adopt-assistance/?CWIGFunctionsaction=adoptionByState:main.getAnswersByQuestion&questionID=14
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Same! Of course, your romantic relationships are up to you so LW doesn't have to be able to explain to themselves why, they just have to know if they want to stay together or not. BUT if they are concerned about ethics and empathy, I think Rowan's current understanding of the situation and whether they acknowledge the hardship and regret what happened to their sister is the big issue. Like an above commenter said, although it's understandable for people to react with horror in situations like this bc we all know about the foster system, nobody can have a moral obligation to raise a child, and even if they could, people who didn't want to do it would still likely make terrible parents, meaning it would often be bad for children and we don't really want them to? If Rowan definitely did not want to raise (a) her sister or (b) any child at all, the likelihood that she'd have been a good parent is low. We can't know if Rue would have been better off or not, and it's completely possible that Rowan hasn't told LW the whole story - nor do they have an obligation to.
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For me, "obligation" is kind of beside the point. There are plenty of things that many if not most people would agree I have no specific "obligation" to do that I think, if I want to consider myself, am invested in considering myself, a good person, I really should do, from holding a door open for an elderly person to, in this case, taking in my siblings if the only other option had been foster care. They weren't my kids; I didn't make a choice to bring them into this world. I still helped take care of them after my dad died, and I still would have taken responsibility for them if my mom had died or otherwise not been able to take care of them while they were minors. And I would still have considered myself kind of a shit person if I hadn't, or at the very least, if I had let them go into a bad situation rather than do so.
(I mean, speaking personally: do my siblings have an "obligation" not to constantly give me low-grade crap at family gatherings? Probably not, but I think doing it makes them lousy people, and I've decided I don't have an "obligation" to be around them anymore.)
Again, YMMV, but as you say, your relationships are up to you. If LW is horrified by Rowan's actions, and more importantly, horrified by her current feelings about and actions related to those past actions, then LW should at the very least sort it out before committing any further, and should probably just end things before they get any more committed at this point.
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