Fostering

Fostering is the practice of using a parent or set of parents to care for someone else's child on a long-term basis. Often the child's own parents have died or have been declared legally unfit to look after him. Modern government social services and some private agencies place such children with families they believe will give them good homes.

Adoption

Fostering is often a first step toward adoption. Although both practices involve the assumption of parental roles by persons who are not the child's biologic parents, adoption involves legal considerations not found in fostering.

The original ancient Roman notion of adoptio, or “adoption,” was simply one of passing legal authority over an individual from one person to another, often for the purpose of making alliances and securing the inheritance of property. In Roman times the person who was adopted was most often an adult male who continued, even after his adoption, to retain ties of love and duty toward his own living parents. In modern society these ties are normally broken in favour of ties of affection between the adoptive parents and children. The modern notion of adoption, then, combines legal aspects of the Roman notion with the affective aspects of both fostering and biologic parentage.

Adopted children in most countries today enjoy the same privileges as natural children. They are treated as fully part of the family into which they are adopted. Adoption gives couples who are unable to produce children of their own the chance to raise children, who might themselves not otherwise find a home.

Kin networks

As extended families disperse and government agencies take over economic responsibilities formerly held by them, extended families become kin networks. This has happened in most modern societies. Whereas the extended family is usually associated at least with residential proximity, if not coresidence, kin networks for many people stretch around the world.

An interesting result of worldwide migrations, such as those from Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, or following World War II, has been the extension of kin networks. Far from being dissolved, as some people suppose, these networks often take on a peculiar significance. Many Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, and others keep in contact with their countries of origin in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. This contact contributes to their personal identity with their countries of origin. Kin networks are often better maintained between dispersed families than between those in closer proximity. Australians, for example, generally know their personal family histories and keep in touch with distant relatives in the British Isles and elsewhere, whereas their British cousins tend to have less interest in these matters and may have less need to keep in touch with relatives within the British Isles.

A less dramatic but equally important form of kin network is that between urban and rural areas within a particular country. As migrations to urban areas have increased, contacts have been kept up, and urban families may keep in touch with relatives in cities other than their own, as well as with relatives in their places of origin. This happens less in Europe, but it remains important in many parts of North and South America, the West Indies, Africa, and Asia.

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The one-parent family

A common variant of the nuclear family is the one-parent family. This form consists of one parent and his or her children. One-parent families may be formed through widowhood, divorce, or separation. They may also be formed when an unmarried person, usually a woman, raises children on her own. In many Western industrialized societies, the one-parent (especially the single-mother) family is becoming more common and tolerated. However, the extent to which it is as successful as the traditional nuclear family is a matter of conjecture.

In many traditional cultures an unmarried mother is encouraged or even forced to marry, or else she is required to give up her child for adoption by another family. It is becoming increasingly common, however, for a mother to retain her children and raise them, often with the help of her own parents or of government social agencies. In many countries this type of arrangement is more socially acceptable than formerly. In some parts of Africa, for example, female-headed one-parent families are actually more common than nuclear families as the basic household unit.

Sometimes such an arrangement is permanent, but similar female-headed households are also common in places where men are forced to leave their wives in order to find work. In southern Africa migrant labourers often have to leave their families for years at a time. This variant, however, is regarded by many sociologists as a form of nuclear, rather than one-parent, family organization. The man supports his family with wages earned away from his marital home but continues to regard it as his home, even though he may live for extended periods elsewhere. A somewhat different but related form of family organization is the West Indian matrifocal family.