After the Mommy Meet-Up Disaster I decided to gracefully bow out of that particular cohort.  The only problem was that I had already signed-up to provide a meal for a mother who recently gave birth (and didn’t attend the meet-up mentioned above).  Fortunately, this is New York City where no one expects you to actually cook.  Instead, you just order something from your favorite restaurant and have it delivered (My self-righteous-stay-at-home-mom is rolling over in her bible-belt grave by the way), no uncomfortable face-to-face time necessary. A few clicks of the mouse and one Sushi Combo Deluxe later, my responsibilities were done.

I was done.  Except that the nice mother who received the food was all “Who are you?  When are you due?”.  I responded with a short and sweet two sentence line about occasionally having foster care kids. I thought that might be it, but who am I kidding.  She wanted more, only if I was comfortable, but more if I had it - please tell her why.  So I started blabbing.  ‘Cause that’s what I do and while this blog is supposed to contain most of it, sometimes I leak.

“foster care- i end up answering this question differently every time…  i grew-up around a lot of adopted and foster care kids and i always thought it was such an injustice that their families had 15+ children…i wished that more ‘normal’ families would adopt/foster just one or two.   now, i’m a psychologist and i coordinate services with ACS.  in nyc in particular, the only foster parents out there are incredibly impoverished and uneducated (or infertile and hoping to adopt which is its own disaster)- and they all have multiple children themselves.  another issue is how children get bounced from foster home to foster home- i think the average is 18 homes per foster care child?  i’m committed to always taking my kids back in order to provide some stability and only one ‘second home’.

in general i’m attracted to the marginalized.  i’ve worked with orphans, the disabled, the mentally ill and all of the above in developing countries for a while.  i assume i’ll have my own biological children at some point, but in the meantime i have a lot of resources to share.

i hope that didn’t come across as too do-goody do-gooder!  but that’s my answer to the foster care question today. when i don’t feel particularly chatty,  i reply ‘some people are vegetarians, i keep foster care babies’.   to be honest, i’m not sure ___name of mommy meet-up____ is a good match for me.  i’m pretty socially at-ease but i went to one event (the _______) and was pretty uncomfortable. …..
I’d love to learn more about you and your family as well.  Hopefully we’ll cross paths, Rebecca”