At 29 years old, Robert Carter was already carrying a childhood experience that many people spend a lifetime trying to understand.
He knew what it was like to lose the daily presence of brothers and sisters. He knew what it meant for a child to enter foster care and suddenly find that the people who had shared meals, bedrooms, jokes, arguments and memories were no longer there.
And because he knew that pain firsthand, when five children in Ohio faced the possibility of growing up apart, Carter made an extraordinary decision.
He became their father.
On October 30, 2020, Carter, a single man from Cincinnati, officially adopted five siblings: Marionna, Robert, Makayla, Giovanni and Kiontae. At the time, the children ranged in age from four to ten.
It was not the family Carter had originally planned to create.
It became the family he could not imagine breaking apart.
According to ABC News and Good Morning America, Carter had initially become a foster parent to three of the boys. Only later did he learn that they had two sisters who were living separately in foster care. Once Carter saw the siblings together and witnessed what separation meant to them, his plans changed.
He decided that three children were not enough.
If they belonged together, he believed they should have the opportunity to grow up together.
And he was willing to make room for all five.
A Childhood That Never Left Him
Carter's decision was rooted in his own past.
He was the third-oldest of nine children, according to ABC News. When he was 12 years old, he entered foster care and was separated from his siblings.
For a child, the upheaval of foster care can involve far more than moving to a different house. Familiar routines disappear. Adults change. Schools may change. Neighborhoods may change. In some cases, relationships between brothers and sisters—the people who may best understand what the child has already experienced—can also be disrupted.
Carter knew that experience personally.
He later recalled that his youngest brother was only two years old when they were separated. Carter did not see him again until the boy was 16.
More than a decade of childhood passed between those meetings.
That loss stayed with him.
After Carter was emancipated, he eventually received custody of a younger sister and guardianship of a younger brother, ABC reported. Even while he was still building his own adult life, the role of caring for younger family members was already familiar to him.
Years later, when Carter considered becoming a parent himself, adoption felt natural.
He had always wanted children, he told Good Morning America, and he was aware that many children in foster care needed permanent families.
In 2017, Carter became a licensed foster parent.
He was also building a career. Reports at the time described him as a cosmetologist, hairstylist and business owner in Cincinnati.
His life was already busy.
It was about to become much busier.
Three Boys Arrived
Carter began caring for three brothers: Robert, Giovanni and Kiontae.
Some reports differ slightly on the precise year or month in which the placement began. ABC News reported that the boys came into his care in December 2018, while some local television coverage later described the placement as beginning in December 2019. What is consistent across the reporting is that Carter initially fostered the three boys before discovering the full story of their sibling group.
There were two girls too.
Marionna and Makayla were living elsewhere.
According to ABC, the five children had been placed across multiple foster homes by the time the public child-welfare agency obtained permanent custody. Adoption worker Stacey Barton explained that they were already living in three separate foster homes.
For Carter, that detail had immediate significance.
He knew what separated siblings could lose.
So instead of accepting the arrangement as permanent, he began advocating for contact between the children.
He wanted the brothers to see their sisters.
Eventually, a visit was arranged.
What Carter witnessed changed everything.
The Reunion That Changed His Plan
The five siblings had reportedly gone about six months without seeing one another.
Then they were finally reunited.
For Carter, it was not an abstract debate about foster-care policy or placement capacity. It was five children standing together again.
They hugged.
They cried.
They did not want to let one another go.
Local station FOX19 reported Carter remembering the children crying when it was time to separate again. That was when he realized he could not simply return to the plan he had before the visit.
He had been considering adoption.
Now he wanted all five children.
Carter later explained that he understood their feelings because he had experienced the same kind of separation himself.