Three weeks ago, Kris Jacober's daughters were taken away from her.
Jacober didn't beat or neglect her children, but after six months of caring for her two foster daughters, the girls were ready to return home. The girls were first taken away from their biological mother due to drug abuse, but now that their home has been declared safe, the Jacober household is missing two familiar faces.
"It's hard to talk about since it's so recent," Jacober lamented. "The night they left, my son slept in their bed because he missed them so much."
In addition to parenting her three biological children, Jacober is a licensed foster parent in the state of Arizona. She is also the Community Affairs Coordinator for Aid to Adoption of Special Kids (AASK), a non-profit adoption and foster care agency in Phoenix.
According to AASK, there are more than 6,100 children currently in the foster care system in Arizona and not enough homes for placement.
"There are many licensed foster homes that don't have children because there is a lack of parents willing to accept sibling groups," Jacober said. "It's rare to have a child enter the system alone, usually they come in with a brother or sister."
Without enough foster parents, the children that are taken out of bad situations find themselves in, what Jacober calls, a worse situation. Children awaiting a foster home live in group homes run by staff, which, according to Andrea Christy-Glover, an AASK employee, can be run more like a business than a home.
"The homes are very institutionalized. You can't just go and get something from the fridge or pick up the phone when you want to make a call. There are rules for everything and they are typically strict," she said.
That is why people like Jacober are needed -- people who are willing to take in siblings and give them a more stable home environment, which most of them are not used to.
"The first time I drove out of the driveway they were holding hands and crying because they thought I wasn't coming back. It's little stuff that you see every day that let's you know their life has not been the normal life of a child," Jacober said.
The first step is to become a licensed foster parent, which can take six months to a year, including a nine-week training course and an invasive step-by-step investigation process.
In addition to this long wait, Jacober said it took about four weeks for her and her family to get used to the new additions.
"I didn't know whose clothes were whose. Whose toys were whose. It takes a while just to figure out what they want to eat and when they like to sleep," she said.
Jacober still believes that it was one of the best decisions of her life, however, as the girls became a part of the family. And although it's hard to see them go, the family is ready to go through the process again next fall.
Jacober explained that when you take hardship into account, it's not tough to understand why there is a shortage of foster homes nationwide. But after talking to people who have gone through the experience, perceptions are likely to change.
"There was a man associated with us who only took in kids that were terminally ill," Jacober recounted. "He would take in kids that were supposed to only live for a few more months and somehow, they would lead a pretty normal life for years."
Two-Faced Foster Care
Unfortunately, there is another side to foster care. There are tragic stories of children who never found a home for various reasons. Christy-Glover spoke about a group of three brothers in the agency a few years ago that split up because nobody would adopt them together.
"The youngest brother (age 8) really wanted to stay with the older two," she said, "but because of his behavioral problems, the older two made the decision to split up."
At age 18, both foster children and orphans "age-out," or officially become adults and are no longer eligible for foster care, and leave the system without much assistance.
Erika Bowman, a family specialist with Imani's Child, talked about what happens after a child's 18th birthday. "You are given about two hundred dollars and sent on your way for the most part. Most of these kids don't have luggage, so they just pile there stuff in trash bags and hit the road."
Imani's Child is one of AASK's programs, specializing in placing African American and other minority children in same-race homes.
Bowman cites that African Americans make up only 4 percent of Arizona's population but 16 percent of the population in foster care. Imani's Child explained that while it isn't necessary to keep children in same-race homes, it does have its advantages.
Advantages Abroad
Willa Cree sees none of these advantages but still boasts about being an adoptive White mother of two Asian sons, ages 7 and 5, both from Vietnam.
Cree, 49, a Ph.D. student and teacher in family studies and child development at ASU, married Bruce Millard, nearly 60, in 1996. Shortly after, the couple discussed the possibility of adopting children, as neither of them had children from their previous marriages.
When they tried, they were turned down due to their age. While she was disappointed, Cree understands the logic.
"I think that you have to consider age," Cree said. "I would love a couple more kids, but the reality is that my husband and I are getting too old to start with new children, and at some point our age will make us less than ideal parents."
After putting the idea of adoption on hold for several years, and eliminating foster parenting as an option due to the difficulties and hardships that can ensue, Millard saw a TV program on adopting children from China and was once again turned on to the prospect, this time to international adoption. He then suggested to Cree that they reconsider.
"I told him 'You have 24 hours. I'll ask you again after 24 hours, and if you still feel that way, I'll start the paper work,'" Cree said. "And six and half months later we had (our first child) in our home."
Their second child came a year and a half later. And while Cree glows like any proud mother, she admits the process was costly (nearly $20,000 per child), and the wait can be somewhat daunting due to the unknowns that come with each step.
"It's difficult because with a normal pregnancy you know it's going to be nine months and then you have the child," Cree said, "but with international adoption you really have no idea how long it's going to take."
It took Cree and Millard nearly six and a half months to obtain their first child, while their second took 11 months. The wait for infants and for girls can take up to two years since they are the most requested by international adoptive parents.
Other complications arose, such as dealing with the developmental delays their first child suffered as the result of spending his first two and a half years in an orphanage in Vietnam. Ear infections left him virtually hard of hearing and speechless, and his gross motor skills were vastly underdeveloped, to the point where he could not yet run or catch a ball.
After speech and physical therapy, however, he bears no complications. The family even escorted him to the state chess championships in Flagstaff last weekend where he competed.
The final obstacle for Cree and Millard was teaching their sons about adoption, and in the future, about their Vietnamese heritage. To do this, the family celebrates "Gotcha Day," the day when each boy was adopted (sort of a second birthday). In addition, both parents wish to take their sons to Asia so they can become familiar with their birth culture and language, something they say wasn't ingrained in them when they came over.
"They were too young," Cree said. "But there were some things...(our son) didn't even know what to do with a McDonalds."
Despite the afflictions one can face with international adoption, Cree believes it can be a fairly smooth process when done correctly.
"If you can be just a little patient, and if you don't mind filling out paperwork, and if you do your homework, it can be relatively easy," Cree said.
She recommends checking out the agency to make sure it has an established, credible history, and in general to remain logical and calm about the procedure.
"You have to be smart about it. You can't be driven totally by the urge that you just want a child so badly," she said.
This, Cree explained, can lead to one easily getting scammed or left waiting years for a child.
'He's Still My Son'
While Cree pronounced that adoption "is the way to go," ASU student and adoptive father Joe (last name withheld), claims he would be weary to spend so much time and money as Cree and Millard have.
Instead, Joe's feat is somewhat less intimidating but still as important, at least to him and his wife.
Joe is in the process of adopting his wife's 5-year-old son, someone who he considers to be his own after marrying his mother in 2000 and caring for him for the past two years.
"She taught him from a very early age that he's the luckiest kid on the planet because he could pick his own dad," Joe said. "We'd only been dating a short while when he decided that he wanted me to be his dad. I had him in my arms one time and he turned to his mom and said 'I want Joe to be my dad'."
Joe continued, "Even if this adoption doesn't go through, he'll still be my son and I'll still be his dad."
Joe's wife had her son with another man before moving from North Carolina to Arizona in order to work on her Master's degree in social work at ASU. While the biological father was unaware of the pregnancy at the time and is omitted from the birth certificate, he has consented to release his biological rights so that Joe can lawfully become the father.
"God forbid my wife got in a car accident or something," Joe said, "I wouldn't want somebody who hasn't even seen my son to have more rights to him than I do."
After contacting the County Attorney's Office and filling out droves of paperwork, Joe had to endure a "home study," something that every adoptive couple has to face. A home study involves a social services agency, chosen by the couple from a list given to them by the court, and paid by the couple (in Joe's case $500), that investigates every aspect of the prospective couple's home and life.
"They are trusting you to take children into your house, so there is no aspect of life that they didn't ask me about," Jacober of AASK explained.
But Joe is not nervous, despite his previous divorce and four other children from that marriage. "I'm not a dead beat dad," he said, "so there's no question everything will be OK."
Getting it Straight
One question Joe has yet to be asked is if he is gay or not, a controversial qualification of "fit" parenting that has recently entered the national spotlight via TV show host Rosie O'Donnell's plight to keep her adopted children in Florida after her public coming out.
In Arizona, to qualify to become a foster or adoptive parent, you must be at least 21 and 10 years older than the child in question, and you can be single or married. However, since homosexual marriages are not recognized by the state of Arizona, gays can be certified individually, but not as a union.
While this may not be a knot in Joe's situation, he does believe that being gay prevents some parents from providing their children everything they may need.
"When you have an atypical relationship, a homosexual couple, I think the child is gonna miss out on something," he said. "Men and women were designed differently, psychologically and emotionally, there's no doubt about that. There are things my wife can do -- nurturing that she can provide -- for our child that I can't. So if you have two dads, you're missing out on something; if you have two moms you're missing out on something."
Jason Jarvis, Assistant Director of Forensics and teacher in the Hugh Downs School of Communication at ASU, disagrees.
As the son of a gay man, Jarvis wishes to deconstruct the stereotypes that gay parents are unfit or drive their children to be gay.
"I think it's probably true that people who have gay parents are more likely to be gay, only to the extent that they are more likely to not try and hide who they are," Jarvis said. "They're just more likely to be open about who they are, and that's a good thing. You can't make somebody be gay or not gay."
Jarvis' father and mother divorced as a result of his father's sexual orientation when Jarvis was still in high school. While it took nearly 17 years of Jason's life for his father to finally come out, Jason believes wholeheartedly that his father's homosexuality was never a personal choice.
"Who would choose that?" he asked. "To be who you are and know that who you are, you might get rejected by your family, your friends...some asshole might beat you down or kill you...you don't choose that."
Jarvis continued, stating that everyone's perceptions of the gay lifestyle -- good and bad -- need to be reevaluated.
"My experience is that people watch Will and Grace and think that they know what gay the community is like, but the fact of the matter is, the community is very diverse. I've met hillbilly gay people, red neck queers that are not particularly progressive but they just happen to be gay. To know one gay person is only to know a portion of the gay community," he said.
While Jarvis scoffs at Rosie and her public struggle, he is determined to prove that gay parents can be just as nurturing and loving.
Cree agrees, stating, "There are a lot of people who should not be parents. They are not emotionally or financially ready to be parents. They are not willing to commit the time and energy that a child needs to grow up in a loving home...Sexual orientation has nothing to do with that.
"Growing up in a healthy, loving family is the most important thing."
Correction: On Oct. 21, 2025, at 6:53 p.m., two names and images were removed from this article to preserve the privacy of individuals who were minors at the time of the article's publication.
Reach Ashlea Deahl at ashlea.deahl@asu.edu.
Reach Josh Deahl at joshua.deahl@asu.edu.
