Strategies for Maintaining a Healthy Marriage or Partnership (While Raising Adopted, Foster, or Relative Children)

Let us know about your adoption journey

Raising kids impacted by adoption, foster care, or kinship care can do a number on your marriage or life partnership. Join us for a conversation with Jeremy & Jara Walden, authors of The Heart Work of Foster Care: A Hopeful and Honest Guide to Foster Parenting, about strategies to re-prioritize and strengthen your most significant relationship.


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In this episode, we discuss:

  • How can raising kids together enhance a marriage or relationship? 
  • Why are kids in our community often harder to parent?
    • Trauma, loss, neglect
    • Prenatal substance exposure
    • Challenging behaviors that come from those experiences
  • Why and how might our kids’ needs test our adult relationships?
  • What are some of the additional stressors our relationships may face when fostering or adopting kids who’ve been exposed to trauma?  
  • What are some challenging behaviors kids who’ve experienced trauma can bring that might be particularly difficult for the marriage?
  • What are some signs that we may be neglecting or at least not maintaining our significant relationship?
  • How does your history impact your marriage, while raising kids with trauma impacts?
  • Can you offer specific strategies for “going back,” healing, or re-prioritizing our marriages or partnerships if we are listening to this and realize we haven’t done so?
  • How do single parents prioritize the adult relationships that they value?


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Music Credit: Michael Ashworth; Podcast Producer: megownsoundworks.com; Photo by Arina Krasnikova: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-family-spending-time-together-6338802/