PSYC 3350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Fosterage, Alloparenting, Foster Care
13 May 2018
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o Child fosterage in africa: child rearing is by someone other than the biological parents,
maybe grandparents, an older sister or brother. Alloparenting can also be done by non-
ki. I afria soeties it’s ee doe o-biological kin.
o This is a iportat thee i afria outries, it’s estiated that there are aout 30
million orphans in africa, many of them have become orphans due to the AIDS epidemic.
Most of the common forms of non biological parental care are within family or
neighborhood structure.
o Psychologist called Jill Brown, use qualitative approach, ethnographic approach, she
goes to a ultural otet that she’s ot failiar ith so she goes i ad eoes
immersed in the culture. She lived in a house there, that had a mother and a father but
a shifting number of children. Some biological children lived in the house but not all of
them. They also had nieces, nephews, cousins and unrelated children living with them
→ fosterage through a ople e of kiship.
▪ Why? She interviewed a number of the family members.
▪ She identified few reasons:
▪ sometimes children are given as gifts! If you have a new couple that just got
arried ad do’t hae kids, ou ould gie the a hild of our o as a gift!
This is unrelated to adoption.
▪ Namesakes and grandmother: if a grandmother wants a child to live with her,
she ould ask for it. A hild is gie a ae ad it’s ased o oe of the fail
members. That child will go and live with that family member one day.
▪ Economic reasons: if a family is better off financially to have less children.
▪ To build status of the child involved, if the family has good connections.
▪ Educational purposes.
o The family and household she lived in is shown by a diagram, the F means fosterage and
B is biologica.
o This is against the idea in developmental psychology, that the most important person in
development is the biological mother. However, the child is given away after
breastfeeding is done.
o Also important to understand the idea of colonialism and family:
▪ In canada we had these residential school systems where children were sent to
school, away from home. This had the effect of breaking families and culture.
Canada is still removing indigenous children from their families today.
▪ In 2016 half of children < 4 in foster care, are indigenous.
▪ Foster care is a good thing, the homes these children have to go in have to be
chosen properly.
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