Laura, mother of an adopted child and four foster children: “I couldn’t have children, today I’m a super mom”

First Laura and Gabriele (the names are fictitious) were a couple who could not have children. Today I am parents of five children, one adopted and four in foster care (and they’re waiting for another one, which will arrive in December).

Family foster care is an important opportunity for all those children who do not have the opportunity to grow up peacefully in their family of origin, because it provides them a safe and loving environment for the time that birth parents need to resolve their difficulties.

There The Tree of Life Foundation – which has carried out more than 300 foster care projects from 2006 to today – offered support to Laura and Gabriele during all the bureaucratic phases, collaborating directly with local authorities, social services and the Juvenile Court. The majority of boys and girls in foster care thanks to the L’Albero della Vita Foundation are aged between 6 and 10 years, followed by the 0-3 and 3-6 age groups. However, it is mainly adolescents who are welcomed into residential services. As for instead the majority of foster families (60.6%) are childless.

Laura and Gabriele they started like this, many years ago, with voluntary foster care, then they became Andrea’s adoptive parentswho is now 15 years old, and in 2021 they started with foster care again. For three and a half years the family has welcomed two 7-year-old twins, for long-term foster care, up to the age of 18, and in the last few months two girls have arrived, one a year and a half and one 9 months old (who will be adopted from another pair of parents: Laura and Gabriele are acting as a “bridge family”).

While we talk to Laura on the phone, we hear the vocalizations of the youngest child. “Sing,” says the foster mother. “She likes it a lot.”

How will he be able to manage the separation from these little girls, who he is raising with love?
«My son Andrea, now a teenager, before being adopted by us, at seven months old, had spent five months in foster care with a bridge family, to whom I am still very grateful today: if these foster parents had not given their availability , my son would have ended up in the community. Having lived that experience helps me accept detachment. Of course, it’s not simple: when the adoption of the little girl, who was born premature and is particularly attached to me, was confirmed to us, I cried, but then I thought of those parents who will adopt her.”

The other girl is older.
«With her it’s a little more difficult: she calls us mum and dad, but we tell her that, in reality, we are waiting for her mum and dad. There will be a moment of crying, we know that.”

What if they see her cry?
“Even the tears can be explained.”

Will you see them again?
«There is no fixed rule. Previously we have already welcomed three other children, one of which went up for adoption in 2023, after three months with us: we have already met her new family seven times, and she calls us uncle and aunt. We see another grow through the photos that the social worker sends us, now that he has returned to his biological mother, who needed treatment for a while.”

And you, are you still in contact with the family who fostered your son Andrea?
«Yes, more for our own needs, than Andrea’s. There are photos of the foster parents in his albums: they were a piece of our son’s story, and the story must always be told.”

Until Andrea turned 9, it was “just” the three of you, in the family. In 2021 you started being foster parents again. How did it go?
«When we started talking about foster care, Andrea didn’t agree: we had to work on it, to understand what scared him. In three months, however, he too changed his mind. At the beginning he said: “Okay, but only if they stay for a short time”, but when we started foster care, he himself was the most disappointed at the idea that the children had to leave.”

You and your husband both work. How do you manage such a large workload?
«We are both freelancers, artisans, and therefore have the possibility of managing ourselves independently. We also have a very collaborative extended family: an aunt who irons, a cousin who babysits us, a mother who prepares ragù for us. Then, obviously, we also need some external domestic help.”

All these children are certainly very challenging mentally too.
«Yes, but we feel that this is our path. We have always dreamed and wanted a large family and ours is a couple’s choice. You have to establish your priorities, and even throw yourself in a little. We make these children grow and flourish again, and they give us joy, life, meaning. We wake up every morning already messed up, but I assure you that we are happy.”