The Fosters’ 10-Year Anniversary: Looking Back and Looking Ahead

The Fosters, Freeform’s drama about two moms and their family of biological, adopted, and foster kids, first aired 10 years ago today. Here’s a look back at what the show gave us—and why we need more shows like it.

The Fosters didn’t give us the first depiction of LGBTQ parents or even queer moms on TV. What made it stand out was that unlike most television shows featuring LGBTQ parents at the time, it wasn’t about a couple trying to adopt, get pregnant, or run around with a toddler. It showed a couple with teens and tweens, and focused as much on the children and their perspectives as on the parents. (And yes, there was the 2010 film The Kids Are All Right, in which the teen son and daughter of lesbian moms reach out to find their sperm donor. The film focused more on the moms’ reactions to having the donor in their lives than on the kids, however.)

Stef and Lena Adams Foster, the two moms played by Sherri Saum and Teri Polo, managed to keep me, a now-50-something mom (and many more of us), tuned in to a show on a youth network that spent much of its time on angsty teen drama. They gave us role models of queer women not just trying to have kids (an old trope), but raising them while balancing careers and their own relationship. They had ups and downs and fights and romance and a comfy afghan blanket. They modeled how to talk with our kids about tough things and to support them as they grow and change. They showed us what it was like to struggle with some of the challenges of queer parents, but even more, with the challenges any parent might face, and they did it with love and grace.

And while their family seemed reasonably well off (Stef was a police officer and Lena a charter school vice principal), their cluttered house seemed more in the middle of middle class, more relatable to more viewers, and more in keeping with what we now know about LGBTQ demographics, than the impeccably designed upper-middle-class homes of other fictional queer families at the time, on The L Word, Modern Family, the short-lived The New Normal, and The Kids Are All Right.

Co-creators and executive producers Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg are both gay, and executive producer Joanna Johnson is a lesbian mom, so it is perhaps not surprising that the show felt more authentic (despite the weekly drama) than many other shows. They wrote themselves and their community into it and we saw ourselves there. And ally Jennifer Lopez offered backing that was essential in getting the show to our screens.

The series also broke new ground with the youngest-ever same-sex kiss on TV and storylines about two very different transgender boys/young men, including what TV Guide noted was, “the first time a lead heroine of a teen drama has entered into a romantic relationship with a transgender character.” We also saw thoughtful arcs about teen sexual health and education, the foster care system, teen drug use, and undocumented immigration, among other topics.

Spinoff Good Trouble, which began in 2019, follows daughters Callie and Mariana and focuses more on the lives of them and their friends as young adults than on their families per se. Stef and Lena continue to make guest appearances, however, a testament to the love so many of us feel for their characters and for the entire Adams Foster family dynamic. Good Trouble is also full of other queer characters, and continues Paige, Bredeweg, and Johnson’s interest in exploring issues of intersectionality and social justice alongside engaging dramatic and romantic storylines.

While there have been other queer parents and their children in TV shows before and after The Fosters, none of them centered queer family storylines like The Fosters did, made the parents and children feel so relatable, nor looked so thoughtfully at multiple queer identities. Even the L Word universe, which had several storylines involving parenting, was ultimately more about the adults’ relationships with each other than about parents and children per se. That was fine; not all shows can or should be everything—but I want something more, too.

I have loved seeing stories of queer families woven into other shows, showing how we are woven into the world today, but there was still something special about a show that focused entirely on a family whose queerness reflected mine. Is it too much to hope that one or more queer characters from Good Trouble could be spun off yet again into a show focusing on a new set or sets of queer parents and their kids? Or a whole different series launched that focuses on a new queer family or families?

Personally, I’d love a show about several queer parent families of various L, G, B, T, and Q, racial/ethnic, and other identities, with kids of different ages and genders, living in the same neighborhood and experiencing different challenges and joys separately and together. It would be a model for a new generation of queer youth, queer prospective parents, and queer parents, as well as a way to share our stories with the wider world—both how we are different and how we are the same. That’s a free idea for the taking (but I’d love an invite to the premiere).

The fact that so many folks still regularly post about The Fosters and get excited when Lena and Stef guest star on Good Trouble is testament both to the quality of this show and to the ongoing need for queer family representation. Even as we look back at all The Fosters gave us, then, let’s look ahead to see what more they might inspire.