By Jeremy Walden, Auburn University
Marriage educators have spent decades helping couples improve communication, strengthen commitment, and navigate conflict. Yet one population with an extraordinary need for these skills is often overlooked: foster parents.
Every year, thousands of selfless couples open their homes to children who have experienced abuse, neglect, trauma, and loss. While foster parents receive training on child welfare policies and trauma-informed parenting, they rarely receive support specifically designed to strengthen their marriages. That’s a missed opportunity for us, the couples, and the children they serve.
Foster Care Places Unique Stress on Marriage
Foster parenting introduces challenges that most married couples never face. In a recent survey of 365 foster parents, respondents reported significant strain on their married relationships:
81% identified time demands and exhaustion as major marital stressors.
66% reported emotional stress related to children's trauma.
65% experienced less couple time.
58% cited a lack of personal time and privacy.
38% reported marital conflict over fostering decisions.
35% said fostering strained communication.
33% experienced weakened emotional closeness or intimacy.
Not surprisingly, as a result of these stresses, almost 1-in-5 (18%) had declined placements or stopped fostering due to marriage difficulties. And more than a third (35%) of foster parents in this survey said they have questioned the stability of their marriage because of fostering.
These findings suggest that strengthening foster-parent marriages is not simply about improving relationship satisfaction; it may also help families continue providing stable homes for vulnerable children.
Trauma Affects Caregivers, Too
Children are not the only ones affected by trauma. Research shows that foster parents frequently experience “secondary traumatic stress” as they care for children with histories of abuse, neglect, and loss.
Studies have found that:
More than 75% of foster parents report experiencing direct threats or harm connected to fostering.
Nearly 78% report ongoing emotional distress related to their child's trauma history.
Foster parents experience rates of secondary traumatic stress and burnout comparable to helping professionals working in high-trauma occupations.
Researchers describe symptoms that closely resemble post-traumatic stress, including intrusive thoughts, sleep difficulties, hypervigilance, emotional numbness, irritability, hopelessness, avoidance, increased anxiety about one's own family, and changes in trust or worldview (Bridger et al., 2020; Helder et al., 2026).
These symptoms often spill into marriage through increased conflict, emotional withdrawal, chronic exhaustion, and reduced intimacy. Traditional communication skills remain valuable, but many foster couples also need tools to manage the ongoing stress associated with caregiving.
Marriage Education Is a Natural Fit
Many states require foster parents to complete annual continuing education hours to maintain their foster care license. Marriage education could become one of those approved training opportunities, allowing foster parents to strengthen their relationships while meeting licensing requirements. Because new foster parents are licensed throughout the year, this also creates a recurring pool of couples who are actively looking for approved training opportunities.
With just a few practical adaptations, marriage education programs can become much more accessible and relevant for foster families.
First, if your program provides onsite childcare services with your program, give caregivers education in trauma-informed childcare. Ensure that volunteers receive basic training in trauma-informed care. Understanding attachment, emotional regulation, and common trauma-related behaviors helps create a safe environment where children are supported so that parents can fully engage in the class. Recruit additional childcare volunteers as well. Foster families often include biological, adopted, and foster children, making larger volunteer teams essential for safely serving sibling groups with varying needs.
Second, if your program provides childcare stipends, make them foster-family friendly. Foster parents often need to hire more than one childcare provider to comply with agency safety guidelines. At a minimum, they typically need two childcare workers to supervise a child or group of children, protecting both the children and the caregivers. Stipends should reflect these additional costs so financial barriers do not prevent participation.
Finally, include stress management as a core relationship skill alongside communication and conflict resolution. Helping couples recognize secondary traumatic stress, manage burnout, regulate emotions, and build resilience equips them to use communication skills more effectively during seasons of chronic stress. The good news is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Evidence-based marriage education curricula, including PREP and ELEVATE, already include lessons on stress management that can be emphasized or expanded for foster parents.
Strong Marriages Create Stable Homes
By adapting existing marriage education programs for foster parents, educators can help reduce caregiver burnout, strengthen marital resilience, improve placement stability, and encourage families to continue fostering.
Supporting foster marriages is more than an investment in healthy relationships. It is an investment in children whose healing often depends on the strength and stability of the families who welcome them.
References
Bridger, K. M., Binder, J. F., & Kellezi, B. (2020). Secondary traumatic stress in foster carers: Risk factors and implications for intervention. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29(2), 482–492.
Collins, J. (n.d.). Addressing secondary traumatic stress. Child Welfare League of America.
Helder, S. G., de Vries, S. J. A., Helmond, P., Daams, J., Lindauer, R. J. L., & Hein, I. M. (2026). Trauma exposure and traumatic stress in foster carers: A scoping review. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 17(1), Article 2616986.
Walden, J. (2026). Foster Care & Marriage Survey [Unpublished dataset].
