my relationship with him is that of a mother to her son

December 23, 2018 1:38 PM

News that a Christian child was ‘forced’ into Muslim foster care in a British council estate caused a furore last year. But, despite the challenges, these families play a vital role in bringing up vulnerable children. Here are some of their stories.
posted by sciatrix (13 comments total)

Important to note immediately that this story was completely made up bollocks and nothing of the sort happened.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:02 PM on December 23, 2018 [22 favorites]

So many people, putting up with so much shit, to do so much good.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:03 PM on December 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

In fact, The Times got wrapped on the knuckles for it.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:04 PM on December 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

if you read the Guardian article first you have the impression that any foster child would be lucky in such a case. I think my grinch-like heart just grew a size.
posted by clew at 3:17 PM on December 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

Damn, that made me cry.
I've been working with Somali people lately, and I must say I've seen such a lot of just normative kindness in the particular working environment that we're in. There is something about the way family-orientated communities operate in the more individualist West that's very valuable when it carries over into working practices.
posted by glasseyes at 3:46 PM on December 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

It's a good thing that Christians have never forced their religion upon foster kids of other religions for the past 200 years
posted by benzenedream at 10:56 PM on December 23, 2018 [6 favorites]

There are no Christian kids or Muslim kids, only kids with Christian parents or kids with Muslim parents.
posted by conifer at 11:49 PM on December 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

There are no Christian kids or Muslim kids

I disagree; I don't think religion is something that's forced upon someone until they're 18 and then they instantly "become" an actual practitioner of the religion.

Kids aren't born Christian or Muslim, but in practicing households, by the time they're five, it's part of their identity. By the time they're 12, it'll always be an important part of their life, even if they change religions later. These stories are about teenagers - their religion is one of the few things they can carry with them into foster care, and declaring that it doesn't really exist would not help them thrive in a foreign setting.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:59 AM on December 24, 2018 [9 favorites]

By the time they're 12, it'll always be an important part of their life

I dispute the "always" here, as the daughter of a vicar currently visiting my parents and my 14- and 16-year-old siblings. Some kids just don't take any interest, and some parents don't force the issue when that happens. But then the way people are religious in Denmark has always struck me as much less full-on and identity-essential than in the anglophone world.
posted by Dysk at 1:27 AM on December 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

Nobody complained when an Irish Catholic child was forced into adoption into a Jewish family, was raised Jewish, and is now the editor of one of America's oldest Jewish newspapers.

In fact, my biological relatives seem to think it's sort of cool.
posted by maxsparber at 6:51 AM on December 24, 2018 [12 favorites]

It's a good thing that Christians have never forced their religion upon foster kids of other religions for the past 200 years

It's a good thing that The Observer decided to write this human interest article about foster carers. It's a bad thing that people in this country still need reminding that Muslims are just as British as everyone else, but they took a good angle and delivered on it.

It's a very bad thing that The Times made up those lies, though, and it helps no one to have people on MetaFilter using those lies as a reason to nurture and contrive to air grievances that are unrelated to the (current) good work of social services and foster parents.
posted by ambrosen at 7:05 AM on December 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

One thing I really loved about the relationships portrayed in the article is that in the case of the interfaith adoption, the foster parents and the children emphasize learning from each other and influencing one another. The parents talk about having learned things and had experiences they might not have had if they weren't making an effort to let their kids keep in touch with their home cultures, which is lovely. But they also talk about the children getting excited for Eid and speaking fluent Urdu now--and that's also lovely, that parents and children are reaching out and sharing their contexts in both directions.

I liked that very much. I had initially planned to focus this FPP with additional links confirming that the Times was completely full of shit, but I found that the focus kept slipping off everything that was good about this piece, which was the one I really wanted to share. We so often talk about parents as unilaterally shaping their children, and the perspective that these parents take of not only shaping but being shaped by both their Muslim and non-Muslim foster and adopted children was a welcome counterpoint.
posted by sciatrix at 8:34 AM on December 24, 2018 [13 favorites]

I've never wanted kids of my own, but the more time that goes by, the more I think I might want to be a foster parent one day. This article nudged me a little further along that path, I think.
posted by Jynnan Tonnyx at 3:00 PM on December 24, 2018 [3 favorites]