Essay
Foster Care and the Doctrine of Belonging
Maybe fostering a child has crossed your mind before: 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?
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.” 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. This is why in Doctrine and Covenants 18:10 Christ reminds us to “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.”
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.
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:
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.”
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 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.
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:
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.
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?
- 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?