He Grew Up in Foster Care—Then Adopted Five Siblings So They Could Stay Together

For some children, the hardest part of entering foster care is not only leaving the home they knew. It is the possibility of losing the people who have shared their childhood with them—their brothers and sisters.

That fear was something Robert Carter understood personally.

A single father from Cincinnati, Ohio, Carter had experienced the foster-care system himself as a child. He knew what it meant to be separated from siblings and to wonder when, or even whether, he would see them again. Years later, that experience would shape one of the biggest decisions of his life: adopting five siblings so they could grow up together rather than being separated into different homes.

The story gained national attention in 2020, when Carter officially became the father of Marionna, Robert, Makayla, Giovanni and Kiontae. At the time, Carter was 29 years old. What made the story particularly striking was that his decision was not simply about becoming a parent. He was determined to preserve a relationship that he knew from personal experience could be painfully fragile inside the foster-care system. ABC News

A Childhood Shaped by Separation

Robert Carter was one of nine children. According to reporting from ABC News, he entered foster care at age 12. CBS News later described him as entering foster care at 13, illustrating a minor discrepancy in accounts about the exact age. What is consistent across the reporting is that Carter was still a young teenager when he entered the foster-care system and that his siblings were not all able to remain together. ABC News

For Carter, separation was not an abstract idea.

He had lived it.

In an interview reported by ABC News, Carter recalled that he had not seen one of his younger brothers from the time the boy was about 2 until he was 16. That enormous gap represented much more than years on a calendar. It meant missing birthdays, ordinary childhood moments and the everyday experiences that normally allow siblings to remain connected as they grow. ABC News

CBS News later reported additional details about Carter's childhood. His mother, who was raising nine children as a single parent, struggled with alcoholism. Carter said that as a child he sometimes stole food because he wanted to make sure his siblings had something to eat. After entering foster care, he lived in multiple homes and eventually lived independently while still very young. CBS News

Those experiences could have left Carter focused only on surviving his own childhood.

Instead, they influenced the kind of adult—and eventually the kind of father—he wanted to become.

Carter later explained that his difficult childhood became motivation to create something different for children who needed a home. Rather than allowing his past to define him permanently, he used what he had experienced as a reason to provide children with the stability he once lacked. CBS News

That philosophy would become especially important when he eventually entered the foster-care system as an adult.

From Foster Child to Foster Parent

Carter became a licensed foster parent in 2017, according to ABC News. By then, he had already developed a strong desire to become a parent and believed that children who needed permanent homes deserved adults willing to open their lives to them. ABC News

His path toward fatherhood was not an ordinary one.

He did not simply decide one day that he wanted to adopt a child. He became involved in foster care first, opening his home to children who had already experienced instability.

In 2018, according to CBS News, Carter became a foster parent to three brothers. ABC News' 2020 report places the arrival of the three boys in December 2018, while later local reporting from FOX19 described the fostering arrangement as beginning in December 2019. The different reports contain slightly different timelines, but they agree on the essential point: Carter initially cared for three brothers before discovering that they had two sisters living elsewhere in foster care. ABC News

The three boys were Robert Jr., Giovanni and Kiontae.

At first, Carter's household consisted of himself and the three brothers.

Then he learned something that changed everything.

The boys had two sisters.

Their sisters, Marionna and Makayla, were also in foster care—but they were living in different homes.

For Carter, that information immediately carried a deeper meaning because he knew what it was like to have siblings somewhere else in the world while growing up without them.

The Five Children Were Living Apart

The siblings had already been separated for months.

According to ABC News, the children had come from a neglectful home and, after being placed into foster care, were living in three different foster homes. Carter became aware that the boys had sisters and began advocating for visits between them. ABC News

Local Cincinnati television station WLWT similarly reported that Carter knew firsthand what it meant to be removed from a biological home and separated from siblings. He remembered spending years apart from some of his own younger brothers and sisters. WLWT

For the children, being able to see each other again was understandably important.

But the visits also revealed just how painful separation had become.

Carter arranged opportunities for the siblings to spend time together. During one of those visits, the children hugged one another, became emotional and struggled when it was time to say goodbye.

Carter later described seeing the children cry and not wanting to leave one another.

That moment became the turning point.

He realized that simply arranging occasional visits was not enough for what he wanted for them.

He wanted the five children to wake up in the same home.