It is a deeply entrenched belief in popular culture and child welfare circles that infants placed in foster care are a “blank slate,” meaning that they are born without pre-existing knowledge, innate ideas, or built-in mental templates. This prevailing assumption overlooks the emotional and psychological scars carried by infants. In Get Too Attached: Collective Wisdom on Fostering Babies, Dr. Alicia McCormick and nearly thirty fellow foster parents systematically dismantle this myth as they share their stories of foster parenting with the readers.
The book is structured into six consistent questions answered by current and veteran foster parents, and they provide their personal experiences of navigating the raw realities of infant trauma. Dr. McCormick, who has personally fostered over 30 babies as an Emergency Shelter Home (ESH) provider in California, sets a compassionate tone where she candidly shares her own steep learning curve. This includes taking in medically complex and substance-exposed newborns, which will help readers understand that stress hormones cross the placental barrier and that the loss of a birth mother’s familiar voice, smell, and heartbeat constitutes a profound attachment injury, which can affect infants and their behavior.
What makes this book an essential resource for parents and advocates is the diverse, unvarnished range of stories shared by its contributors:
- The Trap of the “Good Baby”: In Chapter Eight, Amanda shares the story of bringing home a newborn who was born drug-exposed after her birth mother experienced homelessness and severe pregnancy trauma. Initially, Amanda thought she had been blessed with the “easiest baby in the world” because the infant never cried and slept for hours on end. However, Amanda soon realized this was a trauma response—the infant had learned in her first weeks of life that crying brought no comfort, so she had simply shut down to conserve energy.
- Complex Systemic and Medical Challenges: In Chapter Ten, Laci, a professional nurse, recounts the terrifying experience of unexpectedly taking in a nine-month-old foster son who had suffered 36 broken bones and extreme physical neglect. Her account highlights the vital necessity for foster parents to serve as fierce, relentless medical and legal advocates.
- Shifting Mindsets on Reunification: In Chapter Seven, Leslie reflects on her early days of fostering, admitting that her initial goal was simply to grow her family through adoption. However, after experiencing her first placement, her perspective transformed into deep empathy for biological mothers, turning her into an ardent advocate for reunification and family preservation.
Dr. McCormick’s contributors do not hide the exhaustion. They share the midnight feeding struggles and the grief that accompanies saying goodbye when a child returns home or moves to a relative, directly challenging the well-meaning cultural trope: “I could never foster because I would get too attached.”
The book’s collective voice offers a resounding response: Getting attached is the entire point. Traumatized infants do not need detached caregivers; they need adults willing to risk heartbreak so that a child’s emotional baseline can be made whole.
Whether you are a prospective foster parent, a social worker, a pediatrician, or a church ministry leader, Get Too Attached offers equal parts practical caregiving strategies—such as baby-wearing, sensory tools, and navigating early intervention therapies—and profound emotional validation. It is a necessary, compassionate guide for anyone standing in the gap for vulnerable infants.
Read the book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/021kJ9Y3
