Foster care is an arrangement by which children live temporarily with people other than their own families, who for various reasons are unable to care for them; often, the reason for foster care is abuse or neglect by the child's parent.

Perhaps more than the young of any other species, human infants are dependent on others for their physical well-being. And so, recognizing that children are dependent on social interaction for their physical survival, human society has always found ways of caring for dependent children. In primitive societies, children who lose their parents are usually incorporated into the families of others, or into larger social groups as servants, apprentices, or simply as unwanted children. Until recent times, under British and U. S. poor laws, foster children were frequently placed with families that supported them into adulthood, while teaching them a trade. In some rural areas in...