The legal logic of aging out is that there will be a line in the sand where it is over. A young person reaches 18, or 21 in states with extended care, the court’s involvement ends, and the state stops acting as a parent. Families do not follow that calendar. More than 15,000 young people leave foster care this way every year (Adoption Council), and the research keeps finding that many of them respond to the loss of a legal family by turning toward the biological one. The system spends years separating children from their birth families and then, at the moment of exit, leaves the question of what to do about those relationships almost entirely to the young person.

How many go back depends on what is being counted. In an early follow-up of the Midwest Study, which tracked former foster youth in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, about 17 percent of those who had left care were living with a birth parent and another 18 percent were living with other relatives, putting roughly a third in a family household. The same report found that most young people felt close to their families: 63 percent felt very close to their siblings, half felt very close to their grandparents, and more than two-thirds felt somewhat or very close to their birth mothers, with noticeably less closeness to fathers (Courtney). A later review of eight studies, covering samples from 66 to 732 young people, put the share living with any birth parent after care at 4 to 18 percent, with 46 to 56 percent reporting closeness to their birth mother and 25 to 32 percent to their birth father (Havlicek and Katz). The gap between these numbers likely reflects different ways of measuring closeness and different points in a young person’s twenties, but both point to the same conclusion: even when a young person does not move back in, the relationship does not simply end.

The most recent qualitative evidence suggests the pull is strong. A 2025 study of 53 young adults ages 18 to 22 who had aged out of care in one Western metropolitan area found that 36 of them, or 68 percent, had reconnected with birth family and were working out what the relationship would be. Another 8 (15 percent) had stayed connected throughout, and only 9 (17 percent) were not in contact and not interested in a relationship (Havlicek et al., “Navigating”). The sample is small and regional, and the data come from responses to just two open-ended questions, so the percentages should be read as a picture of the pattern rather than a national rate. These studies have come to the conclusion that reconnection is the rule more than the exception.

What makes this hard to act on is how little the research can say about whether going back helps. A systematic review of 16 articles from 10 studies found that most of the literature reports whether young people have contact with birth parents and where they live afterward, while far fewer studies ask what kinds of support birth parents actually provide or what the benefits and risks of different kinds of support are (Havlicek). The earlier review of eight studies found that only two asked whether parental rights had been legally terminated, and its authors suggested that the benefits of these relationships may be more emotional than practical (Havlicek and Katz). There is some evidence of practical benefits. A preliminary analysis of Midwest Study data found that closeness to birth parents predicted having a bank account and receiving financial help from birth family (Nabunya and Courtney). But the researchers who studied reconnection most closely describe these relationships as complicated whether or not a young person reconnects (Havlicek et al., “Navigating”), and nothing in the evidence suggests that a return to family is automatically safe.

A study that looks at a different kind of return shows why. Using Wisconsin administrative data on more than 8,000 former foster youth, researchers found that young people who were reunified with their families before 18 had lower odds of graduating high school than those who aged out, and were less likely to enroll in college, though their earnings did not differ significantly. The authors suggested that reunified families typically receive little long-term support (Berger et al.). That study measures reunification as a legal exit from care, not an adult’s decision to reconnect, so it should not be read as evidence about the second group. The study also cites research that roughly 30 percent of reunified children experience new maltreatment within three years and 20 to 30 percent reenter care within five years, figures that describe children, not young adults, which could be very different. What carries over is the lesson that a family reunion without support is not a solution, and that the people a young person returns to may be the same people whose circumstances led to removal in the first place.

The opposite extreme carries its own risks. Sponsors of a California bill cite a 2023 study of former foster youth in the state finding that fewer than half had a long-term relationship with anyone, with even lower rates among Black and Native American youth, and a 2022 study associating living with a birth parent with lower adult arrest risk, less homelessness, better mental health, and higher life satisfaction (Children’s Advocacy Institute). These come from an advocacy group’s summary and describe associations, not proof that a return home causes better outcomes. Still, they fit the rest of this series: a young person with no one is not safe, and a young person returning to a family without preparation is not safe either.

The policy response that is starting to emerge focuses less on pushing young people toward or away from their families and more on making the choice informed. California’s SB 534 would address a gap in current law, which requires counties to give aging-out youth documents and guidance on housing and jobs but does not require them to share family contact information, even when the county has it and the youth asks. The bill requires counties to give youth the last known whereabouts and contact details for their parents and siblings before they turn 18 and at later review hearings, and it applies to young adults still in extended care. Young people can decline the information (Children’s Advocacy Institute; Assembly Committee on Human Services). The Senate passed it 34 to 0 and the Assembly 78 to 0, and according to LegiScan the governor signed it on September 20, 2026 (LegiScan).

Kansas has tried a different approach. In April 2024, it became the first state to create a SOUL Family legal permanency option for youth 16 and older, which lets a young person form a lasting legal bond with a trusted adult, whether a relative or a chosen family member, without severing legal ties to birth parents and siblings, and keeps access to transition services such as financial support, education benefits, and health coverage. The model was conceived by young leaders with foster care experience, and it responds to a state where more than 56 percent of youth 16 and older leave care without a permanent family (Annie E. Casey Foundation). The design reflects what the research on reconnection implies: for many young people, the question is not birth family or new family, but how to keep both.

For most young adults, reconnecting with family is something they do on their own timeline, with parents or relatives who stayed in their lives all along, and with a safety net underneath if it goes badly. Former foster youth do the same thing without the history, without information about where their relatives are, and often without anyone to help them judge whether a particular relationship is safe. The evidence cannot yet say when reconnection helps and when it harms, but it is clear enough on one point: it happens, and a system that ends its responsibility at 18 or 21 without planning for it is leaving the riskiest part of the transition unsupported.

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Works Cited

Adoption Council. “Foster Care and Adoption Statistics: AFCARS 2025 Update.” National Council for Adoption, 27 Mar. 2026, adoptioncouncil.org/article/foster-care-and-adoption-statistics/.

Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Kansas Enacts New Permanency Option for Older Youth in Foster Care.”The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 19 Apr. 2024, aecf.org/blog/kansas-enacts-new-permanency-option-for-older-youth-in-foster-care.

Assembly Committee on Human Services. “SB 534 (Padilla): Hearing Materials.” California State Assembly, 30 June 2026, ahum.assembly.ca.gov/media/1625.

Berger, Lawrence M., Maria Cancian, and Jennifer Noyes. “Permanency and the Educational and Economic Attainment of Former Foster Children in Early Adulthood.” American Sociological Review, vol. 83, no. 4, 2018, pp. 716–43, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7286604.

Children’s Advocacy Institute. “SB 534 (Foster Youth Reconnection).” University of San Diego School of Law, www.sandiego.edu/cai/documents/sb534-fostyouthreconnectionbill.pdf.

Courtney, Mark E. “Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth: Executive Summary.” Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, 2005, www.chapinhall.org/wp-content/uploads/Courtney_Midwest-Evaluation-Adult-Functioning_Exec-Summ_2005.pdf.

Havlicek, Judy. “Systematic Review of Birth Parent–Foster Youth Relationships Before and After Aging Out of Foster Care.” Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 120, 2021, article 105643, doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105643.

Havlicek, Judy, and Colleen Cary Katz. “What Is Known about the Relationships That Aging Out Foster Youth Have with Their Birth Parents? Past Research and Future Directions.” Society for Social Work and Research 24th Annual Conference, 16 Jan. 2020, sswr.confex.com/sswr/2020/webprogram/Paper40111.html.

Havlicek, Judy, et al. “Navigating Relationships with Birth Family after Aging Out of Foster Care: Experiences of Young People.” Families in Society, Feb. 2025, nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/navigating-relationships-birth-family-after-aging-out-foster-care-experiences.

LegiScan. “CA SB534 | 2025–2026 | Regular Session.” LegiScan, legiscan.com/CA/bill/SB534/2172.

Nabunya, Proscovia, and Mark E. Courtney. “The Relationship Between Family Ties, Social Support, and Economic Assets of Foster Youth Making the Transition to Adulthood.” Society for Social Work and Research 17th Annual Conference, Jan. 2013, sswr.confex.com/sswr/2013/webprogram/Paper18547.html.