In 2018, news headlines broke of a horrific incident: a White, two-mom couple had driven off a cliff with their six Black, adopted children, in an apparent murder-suicide. Author Roxanna Asgarian here looks deeper, however, centering the children’s birth families and giving us a well-researched exposé of the failing foster care and adoption systems that can also be blamed for the tragedy.
This is a story of racism, both systemic and personal, which prioritized the White adoptive parents over Black relatives; of a system geared to prioritize money over children; of misuse of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) to take children from their birth parents; of intergenerational trauma and siblings torn apart. Asgarian looks not only at the stories of the six children who died, but also at that of their older brother, who early on was set on a track towards prison.
Asgarian also takes the media to task for focusing primarily on the adoptive family and not their birth families, which risks “reinforcing the same racist structures and actions” that led to the adoptive parents retaining custody of the children despite allegations of abuse.
Although this book is not really about the adoptive parents, I’m including it in this database because it clearly intersects with a story (though not an admirable one) of queer parenthood, and because so many of us queer parents form our families via the foster care system. It is important for us to understand the often harmful, racist dynamics of that system and if possible, work to change them.
This is a harrowing tale and may be difficult to read, but that’s all the more reason for many of us to do so. Pair it with David Ambroz’s A Place Called Home, which offers a similar indictment of the foster care system, but from the perspective of a former foster youth.
Content warning: mention of an attempt to die by suicide (though the book uses the phrase “commit suicide,” which is not recommended (PDF) by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention).
