'Making' a family: The motives and practices of foster parenting

The chapter examines the discursive practices of foster parents as they attempt to make sense of parenthood and family. The meaningful context of parental narratives is the problematisation and sometimes stigmatisation of fostering at the level of wider social attitudes and media discourse. The controversial meaningful context explains the need for discursive justifications of parental decision to foster children. Three research questions structure the chapter: (1) how foster parents talk and what family and parenthood mean for them; (2) how foster parents justify their decision to foster; and (3) what practices are mentioned in these narratives. The chapter is based on an analysis of a corpus of texts written by foster parents about their parental experience. One conclusion reached here is that foster care is often presented in parental narratives as meaningfully equal to birth parenthood. Several justification strategies of discursive foster family and foster parenthood building were identified and are examined in the chapter.