31 TV Characters Trumps America Needs Right Now

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20. Lena Adams Foster- The Fosters

Lena Adams Foster (Sherri Saum) is one of the mothers to five children on The Fosters. That’s right, one of the mothers. She’s married to Stef (Terri Polo) and together, have 4 adoptive kids and one from Stef’s previous marriage. This show is tackling some of the most prominent issues on television right now including any and every issue in the LGBTQ+ community- a lesbian couple raising kids, a young boy figuring out his sexuality, and a few transgender characters. The Fosters is a leader in diversity.

Bradley Bredeweg and Peter Paige are incredibly passionate about this show and what stories it represents. In an interview with Huff Post, Bredeweg explains, “Peter and I always wanted to write a family drama that reflected the modern American family. We started looking around at the landscape and thought about maybe telling a story about the American family with gay dads, but we felt that had been done a few times before and rather well. Then we realized that there was a kind of a vacuum when it came to stories about women raising families. So we set off in that direction. Many of our own friends are moms raising biological kids. Some of them have fostered and adopted. Suddenly, we realized that we had a story here that hadn’t been told on television before.”