“I could never foster. I’d get too attached.”
It is a sentence foster parents hear all the time. Usually, it is meant as admiration. The speaker imagines loving a child deeply, only to face the possibility of reunification or another placement and concludes that the emotional cost would be too much.
But what if getting attached is not a reason to avoid fostering?
What if it is exactly what a baby needs?
That question sits at the heart of Alicia McCormick, PhD’s forthcoming book, Get Too Attached: Collective Wisdom on Fostering Babies. Drawing from her own experience and the stories of other foster parents, McCormick challenges the idea that successful fostering requires emotional distance. Instead, the book repeatedly returns to a different message: babies in foster care need caregivers who are willing to love them fully, even when the future is uncertain.
McCormick has heard the familiar comment herself. In the book, she explains that foster parents are not people who somehow stay detached while caring for vulnerable children. They do become attached. They do grieve. But they are willing to carry the pain of letting go if it means the child experiences a little less hurt.
That distinction matters because foster babies often enter care after experiencing significant disruption.
The book challenges the assumption that infants are too young to be affected by trauma. Babies may experience prenatal stress, substance exposure, neglect, medical challenges or separation from familiar caregivers. Some show their distress through feeding or sleep problems. Others may cry constantly, struggle to be soothed, resist closeness or appear unusually quiet and undemanding.
For children whose earliest experiences may have included uncertainty, attachment can become an important part of caregiving.
Throughout Get Too Attached, foster parents describe responding quickly to babies’ needs, holding and wearing them, establishing predictable routines, reducing overstimulation, seeking therapies and early-intervention services and creating opportunities for safe connection. McCormick herself emphasizes frequent physical closeness and consistent caregiving as ways to help babies begin building trust.
Of course, becoming attached does not guarantee forever.
Foster care is not designed as a simple path to adoption. Reunification with biological family is often the goal and several contributors in the book discuss the difficult work of loving a child wholeheartedly while also supporting visits and relationships with birth parents. One foster parent puts the tension clearly: children need foster parents to attach to them and fully parent them, while those same caregivers may also need to support reunification.
That is what makes fostering both beautiful and difficult.
The willingness to get attached does not mean ignoring boundaries, denying grief or pretending foster care is easy. It means deciding that a child’s need for security matters more than an adult’s desire to avoid heartbreak.
McCormick brings substantial experience to that message. She has fostered 34 babies, including medically complex and substance-exposed newborns and teaches workshops on caring for substance-exposed infants and supporting infant attachment.
So perhaps saying, “I’d get too attached,” does not disqualify someone from becoming a foster parent.
Perhaps it reveals something valuable: the capacity to care deeply even when there are no guarantees.
And for a baby who needs safety, comfort and connection, that kind of attachment can matter enormously.
Get Too Attached: Collective Wisdom on Fostering Babies by Alicia McCormick, PhD, will be available soon.
