Essay

Foster Care and the Doctrine of Belonging

Maybe fostering a child has crossed your mind before, but you are not quite sure what to do with the thought. Could Christ actually be asking our family to foster? Do we have room in our home and our lives for a child who needs us? What if we already have children? What if we have struggled with infertility? What if we love a foster child and then have to let that child return home? And where does foster care fit with what the restored gospel teaches about mothers, fathers, and God’s plan for families?

A good place to begin is with something simple and deeply important: every child belongs to God before that child ever enters a foster home. Every child is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, known individually by Them and born with divine worth, potential, and an eternal future. A difficult family situation may change where a child lives or who is caring for that child for a time, but it does not change who that child is to God.

The Lord gives us a beautiful truth to keep in mind as we think about children whose lives have been disrupted. In Doctrine and Covenants 18:10, He says simply, “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.” That includes the child entering a new home carrying experiences you may not fully understand. Their circumstances may be complicated, but their worth to Heavenly Father is not.

For some husbands and wives, opening their home may be one way Christ invites them to love and care for one of Heavenly Father’s children. They cannot undo what happened before or know how long the child will stay, but they can offer something sacred in the present: helping the child begin to believe that he or she is worth knowing, loving, protecting, and caring for.

When you begin with their divine identity and their great worth in His sight, foster care starts to look like more than providing a temporary place to live. It can become an opportunity to see one of God’s children more nearly as He sees them—and, for some families, to help that child experience a little more of the safety, belonging, and love He has always wanted for them.

Jesus Christ repeatedly noticed people whose needs others might have overlooked. He saw the person before He saw the circumstance. That same way of seeing matters when we think about children in foster care.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches that every person is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents with “a divine nature and destiny.” It also teaches that fathers and mothers have sacred responsibilities toward their children and that children are entitled to be born within the bonds of marriage and raised by a father and mother who honor their marriage covenant.

But the proclamation also recognizes something deeply important about mortal life: families do not always get to live the ideal in the way they hoped. It teaches that “Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.” Foster care is one place where that principle can become very real.

Sometimes abuse, neglect, addiction, illness, incarceration, death, or another serious crisis means a child cannot safely remain with his or her parents for a time. The circumstances may change, but the child’s need for protection, nurturing, stability, and love does not.

And neither does the child’s identity.

Being in foster care describes something that is happening in a child’s life. It does not define who that child is. Long before entering a foster home, that child was already known and loved by Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. He or she still has divine potential, agency, gifts, and an eternal future. That is worth holding onto, especially when the child’s present circumstances are complicated or painful.

Cara’s Story: Seeing Foster Care Through a Child’s Eyes

It also helps to hear about foster care from someone who actually experienced being the child entering a new home.

In this first-person account, Cara shares some of what she wishes adults understood about children in foster care. Her experience helps explain why entering a safe home does not necessarily mean a child immediately feels safe. A child who has experienced instability, loss, or adults who could not be depended on may need time before trusting that this home will be different.

That is where ordinary family life can become more important than it looks from the outside. Meals are there when expected. Someone comes home when they said they would. Rules remain fairly consistent. Birthdays are remembered. Over time, a child may begin to discover that an adult can correct without rejecting, set boundaries without frightening, and keep loving even when trust comes slowly.

Much of foster parenting is built out of those ordinary moments.

President Oaks Called Foster Parents Peacemakers

President Dallin H. Oaks gave this kind of work powerful prophetic meaning in his April 2026 general conference message “Alive in Christ.”

While teaching about becoming peacemakers, President Oaks included “faithful mothers and fathers who lovingly care for their own children or shelter foster children and raise them in righteousness rather than leave them to be scarred and twisted by the sins of others.”

That teaching helps us understand why fostering can matter so much. Children sometimes carry painful consequences from choices adults have made. Those consequences are real, and they should not be minimized. But neither should we assume a child simply has to carry those burdens alone.

Faithful adults can step into circumstances they did not create and bring something better into them. They can offer steadiness where life has been unpredictable, righteous teaching where there has been confusion, and dependable love where a child may have learned to expect abandonment. President Oaks calls this a unique form of peacemaking.

A Foster Child Is Not Defined by What Happened to Them

One assumption that can quietly influence the way people think about foster children is that serious problems in a child’s family must mean the child is also a “problem child.”

It is not hard to understand where that assumption comes from. Instability and trauma can affect behavior, trust, learning, emotions, and relationships. Foster parents need to understand that and be prepared for it. Loving a child does not mean pretending difficult experiences have had no effect.

But what happened to a child should never become the child’s identity.

Rejection, disruption, and family pain can make certain conclusions feel believable: Nobody stays. Something must be wrong with me. My family history is going to become my future. When life has seemed to repeat those messages, a child may have good reasons for struggling to believe anything different.

The restored gospel offers a much larger view. This child is still a son or daughter of heavenly parents. He or she has agency, divine potential, and possibilities that extend far beyond what has already happened. Through Jesus Christ, people can receive strength, healing, truth, and power to build lives that are not determined by the patterns they inherited.

Esther is a beautiful example. Losing her parents was part of her story. It did not determine the rest of her story.

Amanda and Kal Had More Love to Give

Husband and wife, Amanda and Kal, have a story that gives another glimpse of what fostering and foster-care adoption can look like inside an ordinary family.

They already had a daughter when they began considering whether they could open their home to another child. Eventually they welcomed Matthew, who had entered foster care as a baby, and later adopted him.

Their story is filled with the ordinary work of parenting—learning what Matthew needed, helping him feel secure, playing with him, working with specialists, and gradually helping him become part of everyday family life.

Of course, not every foster placement ends in adoption. Often the hoped-for outcome is safe reunification with parents or relatives. That can ask something very generous of foster parents: to love a child deeply while also supporting what is best for that child, even when what is best may eventually mean saying goodbye.

That uncertainty does not make the love less meaningful. Months or years in a home where adults were dependable, patient, kind, and willing to keep showing up can still become an important part of a child’s life.

What Happens When a Foster Child Turns Eighteen?

Researcher Johanna Greeson’s work on foster youth and natural mentoring found that supportive relationships with caring adults can provide meaningful protection as young people move out of foster care. Child Welfare Information Gateway similarly emphasizes how important it can be for a young person to have at least one lasting, caring adult.

Faithful adults can continue helping that young person build relationships, skills, faith, and confidence long after a case officially closes. He or she will always be a son or daughter of heavenly parents, part of the family of God, with an eternal future.

Could Foster Care Be Part of Your Family?

For some husbands and wives, this is where the question may become much more personal.

Maybe you already have children and wonder whether there is room in your family for another child. Perhaps your children are older and you have begun to sense that your home still has something to give. Or maybe you and your spouse have experienced infertility and have wondered whether your desire to nurture children could take a form you did not originally imagine.

Foster care should never be treated as a consolation prize for infertility, and a foster child should never be expected to heal an adult’s grief. The needs of the child must come first.

But infertility also does not mean a husband and wife have no gifts of motherhood and fatherhood to offer. For some couples, the Lord may eventually lead them toward a child who needs exactly the kind of stability, nurturing, patience, or love their home can provide.

That will not be the answer for every family. The proclamation’s recognition that circumstances may require “individual adaptation” matters here too. God knows the abilities, limitations, responsibilities, health, resources, and circumstances of each family. No faithful person loses eternal blessings because something outside his or her control prevented a hoped-for family experience in mortality.

Still, if foster care has come to your mind more than once, there may be a question worth taking seriously to the Lord: Could Christ be asking us to make room for a child who needs a family right now?

A Few Questions Worth Thinking About

• When I think about foster children, do I first see difficult circumstances, or do I see a son or daughter of heavenly parents with divine potential?
• Have I assumed that strengthening children and families only means caring for children biologically related to me?
• What gifts, stability, experience, or resources has the Lord already given our family that might bless a child?
• If fostering has repeatedly come to my mind, have I actually taken that question to Heavenly Father?

What Can You Do This Week?

Read Esther 2 and 4 and pay particular attention to Mordecai. His part of Esther’s story begins quietly. He sees a girl who has lost her parents, takes responsibility for her, and then continues helping her grow. He could not see everything Esther would eventually become, but he could give her what she needed from him then.

Then read President Oaks’s “Alive in Christ” and consider why he chose to include foster parents among those he described as peacemakers.

If you are married and fostering has crossed your mind more than once, talk about it together. Learn what foster care actually requires where you live. Pray specifically instead of only wondering generally. Ask Heavenly Father whether there is something He wants your family to learn, prepare for, or eventually do.