For years, very little has been known about the personal and emotional lives of foster parents — the people who open their homes to children in need. Now, a Georgia-based researcher is working to change that. Evin Winkelman Richardson, a researcher at the University of Georgia’s Department of Human Development and Family Science, was inspired to explore the topic after hearing friends describe the emotional and practical challenges they faced as new foster parents. Their experiences sparked her curiosity about how fostering impacts relationships between couples and how those relationships, in turn, affect the quality of care children receive.
Through her work in the Couple and Relationship Enrichment Lab, Richardson has focused her research on how fostering influences marital and co-parenting dynamics. Her findings reveal that the strength of a couple’s relationship directly affects their ability to continue fostering. In one of her recent studies involving around 80 foster caregiver couples from across Georgia, she discovered that partners who shared deeper communication, trust, and emotional connection were more likely to continue fostering long-term.
With nearly 400,000 children in foster care across the United States, Richardson believes that understanding the personal challenges foster parents face is crucial. Her earlier research from 2018 highlighted that, although professionals in the child welfare system recognize the importance of strong family relationships, few programs exist to support foster parents emotionally or relationally. To bridge that gap, she began conducting workshops called “Elevate,” designed to teach couples effective communication, mindfulness, stress management, and conflict resolution. Since 2016, these workshops have reached hundreds of foster caregivers in Georgia, and with $6.2 million in federal funding, Richardson plans to expand the program to reach over 1,200 couples in the next five years.
In interviews, Richardson shared that her research may be among the first to closely examine how fostering impacts a couple’s personal relationship. She found that foster parents face unique emotional and logistical challenges—long hours, financial strain, unpredictable placements, and the heartbreak that comes when a foster child leaves their home. Many couples find that these pressures push their relationship to the background, often leaving little room for self-care or emotional connection.
Her studies also revealed that women in foster families often carry most of the caregiving responsibilities, leaving them more vulnerable to burnout and relationship tension. Richardson emphasized that when partners fail to communicate or share responsibilities, their ability to provide stable, loving care for foster children can be compromised. She encourages foster parents to have open, honest discussions about expectations, to regularly revisit their shared goals, and to seek external support through therapy or foster parent groups.
Richardson hopes to expand her future research to include comparisons between married and unmarried couples, same-sex and heterosexual couples, and to study how relationship quality affects the children in their care. Through her groundbreaking work, she aims to give voice to the overlooked emotional realities of foster parents and strengthen the foundation of foster care by focusing on the relationships that sustain it.
Her mission is simple yet profound — to ensure that while foster parents nurture children, they also nurture the relationships that make that care possible.