Interview Meme

Yondalla at the excellent blog Thoughts From a Fostering Family gave me five interview questions, and homework to come back in a year and answer numbers three through five again after we've been matched and placed.

1. How did you meet your husband?

He worked at a neighborhood store. I always thought he was cute and wondered if there was some way I could get to know him better. I'm not shy, but I am kind of geeky.

I ran into him at a book sale, and noticed he was reading a book by Jean Baudrillard. I thought to myself, "Great! A way to start a conversation!" so I walked up to him and said "So I noticed you're reading Baudrillard. I hate his writing." To me, that was an icebreaker, but he was crushed... he didn't care about the book one way or the other, but he thought I was attacking him! He didn't really engage.

Months later, my then-roommate told me that he'd been hanging out with my future husband at the local bar. He said "that guy has a serious crush on you". I started going to the bar, even though I don't drink, and we socialized and developed a romance very quickly. A few months after that, we were living together, and then five years later we got married.

I believe strongly in same-sex marriage rights, so I was holding out to get married in Canada or somewhere that gay marriage is legal. But we realized we needed to get married right away in order to file an adoption application, so we went down to the basement of the Dekalb county courthouse, looked around, followed the "Pistol and Marriage Licenses" sign to the right desk and got hitched.

2. How should race issues be addressed in foster parent training?

That's a huge question. I feel like I'm still in the early stages of learning. One of my pet peeves is that racial issues are often turned into "white parents with black children" issues, when the landscape is really much more complicated. Our curriculum was standardized, and it was focused more on transcultural issues. After all, most of the parents in class were black and all of them said they would be adopting intraracially. So another question that stems from the first question would be... is it necessary, or advisable, to separate training curricula by the race of the foster or adoptive parent? I don't know the answer to that yet, but I tend to think "no".

I do know that white parents are often resistant to discussing race and racial identity. Many become overly defensive when asked to think in racial terms. Training has to start with their identity first, not that of the children. A good classroom environment would have 1) a safe space to talk about racial identity 2) a space that challenges parents to think about their own race and how they would relate to the racial identity of their children. There's a lot of possible conflict there.

Another question: in the training, should black parents be challenged to be more open to transracial placements? On a national level, that seems like a crazy question, because there's a greater need to find families for children of color. But it's very much dependent on local demographics. For example, there are many older white children with severe problems that desperately want and need homes due to the meth epidemic. And there's a rapidly growing number of Latino children entering the foster care system in Georgia leading to a crisis because there are hardly any Spanish-speaking foster parents. Some black people who have lived in homogenous black neighborhoods all their lives have hesitancy and unhelpful stereotypes about communicating with certain members of other races, so in that area transracial training would be very important and beneficial.

Perhaps there should be separate curricula for transracial and intraracial adoptions. Every parent would get general transcultural training... but then a special transracial qualification would have to be earned. It's such a crucial area that I see the need for extra training. Then again, sometimes transcultural differences can be greater than transracial differences.

I also think foster children and in fact all children should get special classes about race and teaching tolerance. It's such a hard subject and it will affect their lives in so many ways! How can you explain "this is something integral to who you are, you have almost no choice in it, it deeply affects the way you think about yourself and the way you relate to other people, it's connected to your culture but not the same thing as culture, and it doesn't really exist (in a biological sense)?" I feel like I've been studying it for decades and I barely understand it. If children start learning about it as early as possible, there would be less uncomfortable silence and less racist bullying. It would not solve all our social problems by any means, but it would definitely improve things.

"And how about some risky questions. You haven't started parenting yet, so:"
3. What do you predict will be the most challenging for you personally?

I'm the breadwinner right now, and my husband is going to the work-at-home dad. I know it's going to drive me nuts sometimes being at work and thinking "well he should be doing X, Y and Z with the kids so let me make sure he is doing it EXACTLY the right way". I'll need to quash that urge to micromanage!

4. What strength or skill do you have that will be most valuable to you as you parent?

I'm also worried about not saying the right things when the children are hurt and crying. I'm not good at that. When crises happen, I like to step up and get things done and make sure everyone is fed and be the strong, quiet one. That's an important strength, on the flip side. I have confidence in myself that no matter what happens, no matter what problem we face, I can cope with it and be the person everyone else in the family leans on.

5. How do you imagine you and your husband working together as parents?

I like to be very thorough; I come up with big ideas and plan them all out. I'm not good at following through on those plans! That's where my husband steps in. He's great at staying focused and on track. This pattern should help when we're doing things like tutoring the children or working out a behavior modification plan.

I'm not good at talking about other people's emotions. He is. I'm better at explaining the world and the way it works. We both like to hug. I like to cook, he likes to clean.

Since a lot of my background is in teaching, I tend to look at parenting through a teaching lens, or a "creating a space to learn and grow" approach. I know he's going to have more of a "play around, enjoy yourself, act as silly and goofy as you want" approach. I'm sure parenting will be much more complicated than either of us imagine, so I'm looking forward to answering these questions again on April 18, 2008.

I'll be thinking about who to tag and interview...