A Cautionary Tale about Romantic Partners

A recent article about a Reddit thread offers an important case study for single foster parents.  A father posted about his discovering that his ex-wife had allowed their 8-year-old daughter to stay alone overnight with the ex-wife’s boyfriend.  The response to his question about whether he was wrong to be concerned was varied.  My view, as an experienced foster parent and lawyer who has spent decades in child welfare, is that it is very risky for single foster parents to allow romantic partners to have access to foster children.  Mixing your personal life and your foster parent role creates a risk of danger to both you and your child.

•   First, as the article sets out, many studies show a higher danger of abuse from unrelated adults who have access to children.  It’s easy to dismiss the danger as coming from stereotypes, but hard evidence shows that the stereotypes have at least a kernel of truth.  Of course, we believe that our romantic partners are wonderful people, and “increased risk” does not mean that anything terrible will happen.  But it’s a risk that we don’t need to take.

•   Second, a much greater risk is that we will compound our kids’ emotional trauma by allowing them to get attached to an adult who, if the relationship falters, will disappear from their lives.  Again, it’s a risk that we don’t need to take.  The most helpful advice I have found is that given to divorced parents, such as this article.  Wait a while to introduce your partner and your kids and then wait a while longer.  

•   Finally, allowing your romantic partner to have access to your kids, even supervised access, increases the risk of false claims against you. I have defended several lawsuits against social service organizations where a tragedy happened while a single foster parent was spending the night with a romantic partner or the partner had moved into the house.  In none of those cases could I see any link between the tragic event and the partner’s presence.  In all of them, however, the opposing side was able to claim that the foster parent was distracted by romance and wasn’t paying attention to his or her primary responsibility.   

I’ve also dealt with claims that the romantic partner had mistreated the foster child, either sexually or physically.  In those cases, the stereotypes about “mom’s boyfriend,” whether true or not, create a presumption that was impossible to overcome.  Being a foster parent is challenging enough; don’t fall into the trap of giving anyone a weapon to use against you. 

As I discussed in my earlier post this week, an important part of protecting yourself against false allegations of mistreating a child is to have a good reputation.  Intermingling your personal life and your foster parenting duties is one sure way to hurt your reputation in a way that can come back to haunt you.

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Interested in learning more?  

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