Foster Parents’ Love Runs Deep

I wish to take issue with the statement you made in your Dec. 8 article (“Only Those With ‘Capacity to Love’ Need Apply”) that “no outsider can love a child in the same way that their own parents can.”

You may sincerely feel that is true, but there are 600 foster families in Orange County who really do believe that we love our foster children in the same way that their own parents do. (In fact, we sometimes feel that we love them much more than their birth families.) It is that very quality of loving that allows us to take a child into our homes and then into our hearts and love him just like he was born to us--yet let him go when he leaves.

Fourteen times I have had the wonderful privilege of mothering a child and developing that strong bond of love--with my birth children, Betty and Michael, and then with my 12 foster babies, one of whom I adopted. To me, love is not a feeling; it is actions--the countless diapers I have changed, the many trips to the park, the midnight bottles, the bedtime stories, as well as the hugs and kisses. So, yes, I do believe an outsider can love a child in the same way his own parents can. I have experienced that love.

RUTH HANNING

Yorba Linda