‘I am their mother’: Woman accepts mission raising, then adopting 4 siblings

The “assignment” to absorb four children on a foster care want list in one swoop was instinctively agreed to because of how much Tiffany Perkins objected to the alternative: splitting up the siblings.

It was personal because that’s what happened when she and her sister were young after their mother became very sick; they were separated and moved around to various homes. That lingering pain made her decision rather easy when accepting four, ages eight, four, three and one, was an option.

“When my sister and I were pulled apart, it affected our relationship to this day – very painful.” Perkins explained. “I know what it like to feel like nobody wants me, and I was not going to send these children back (to the system) after 30 days.

“Someone failed them, but it was not going to be me.”

In April 2025, a Shelby County judge officiated a formal adoption of siblings Aniya, Antario, Andrew and Rashun to Tiffany Perkins, who became their foster parent in 2015.

In 2015, the Memphian opened the door and her full heart for Aniya, Antario, Andrew and Rashun, now a high school senior.

She said her devotion to them was never filtered, never in doubt. So much so, she said, that disclosing they were foster children was only noted when necessary, including at their school.

Their journey together formally culminated last April when she officially and happily adopted them before a judge’s OK.

Integrating them into her home was especially difficult at first and wildly emotional, she recalled, mentioning that neglect left one unequipped to use a spoon.  But perseverance, discipline and help from her six biological children – DeMarkia, Marcus, Arionne, Torian, Tyran and Tyler - saw it through, she insisted.

““I knew what the assignment was: It is to love them. I am their mother.”

“I could not have done it without them.” Perkins said.

Perkins’ experience helping to raise a myriad of relatives and friends’ children when she was younger helped prepare her to become an official foster care provider through Meritan.

But she thinks that conditioning is not necessarily a prerequisite to fostering. It’s something else: perspective.

While the red tape to foster can be a roadblock, “Fostering cannot be seen as a job or viewed as a business proposition,” she advised other prospective foster care parents.

“I knew what the assignment was: It is to love them. I am their mother,” she said.