Definition
Fostering refers to the practice of placing a child in the care of an adult or household other than the child's biological or legal parents, typically on a temporary basis and under the supervision of a state or child welfare authority. In modern legal usage, fostering encompasses the full system of licensed foster care: the placement of children who have been removed from parental custody due to abuse, neglect, or dependency; the licensing and regulation of foster parents or foster families; and the ongoing legal relationship among the child, the foster family, the biological parents, and the supervising agency.
Fostering does not ordinarily transfer legal custody or parental rights. The child welfare agency typically retains legal custody during a foster placement, with the foster parent exercising day-to-day physical care. The arrangement is presumptively temporary, with reunification, adoption, or another permanency plan as the intended endpoint.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "foster" — to encourage, promote, or nurture something; or the act of caring for a child in a foster placement.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To feed, nourish, support, or cherish; to bring up or nurse. Webster's also recognized "foster" in compound forms such as foster child, foster parent, and foster brother, denoting a relationship of care without biological connection.
The common meaning of fostering — encouraging growth or nurturing something broadly — is almost entirely absent from the legal context. In law, fostering is a term of art tied to a specific regulated system of child placement, licensing obligations, and agency oversight. A researcher encountering "fostering" in a legal document should not read it as mere encouragement or support; it signals a formal custodial and welfare framework.
Common Confusion
Fostering is sometimes used interchangeably with adoption, but they are legally distinct. Adoption permanently terminates the biological parents' rights and creates a new legal parent-child relationship. Fostering does not. A foster parent has no automatic right to adopt a foster child, and the foster relationship can be terminated by the agency. Confusion between the two concepts is especially problematic in historical sources, where the vocabulary was less standardized and the Irish custom described in early dictionaries treated fostering as a quasi-permanent, quasi-familial bond more resembling adoption than modern temporary placement.
Why It Matters in Research
The historical legal dictionary entries for fostering describe an Irish customary practice that bears little operational resemblance to modern foster care law. Researchers must treat early dictionary definitions as historical artifact rather than applicable doctrine. Black's and Bouvier's are describing a pre-Norman Irish social institution — not a statutory framework — and their entries shed no light on licensing standards, agency duties, termination of parental rights, or the constitutional dimensions of foster care relationships that dominate modern litigation.
Modern foster care law is almost entirely statutory and regulatory. Research should begin with state child welfare codes, which vary significantly, and with the federal framework established by the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 and the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. These statutes condition federal funding on state compliance with placement, reunification, and permanency planning requirements.
For tax research, foster care payments present a distinct issue: amounts received by foster parents from a state or qualifying agency are generally excluded from gross income under federal tax law, a point entirely absent from historical dictionary treatment.
Researchers using older case reporters or equity records may encounter "foster" relationships described in custody and inheritance disputes where the boundaries among foster care, informal adoption, and de facto parentage were legally ambiguous. Courts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did not always distinguish clearly between a child informally raised in another household and a child placed through any formal mechanism. Reading those decisions requires attention to the specific facts of placement rather than reliance on the label used.
The constitutional status of foster parents is a recurring research trap. Foster parents are not legal parents, and their procedural due process rights in placement decisions have been treated inconsistently across jurisdictions. Researchers should not assume that rights recognized for parents automatically extend to foster parents.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary give identical or near-identical definitions, both citing Mozley & Whitley and, in Bouvier's case, Hallam's Constitutional History. Both describe fostering as an ancient Irish custom in which children were placed with fosterers, with the foster relationship considered stronger than blood, and foster children participating in the fortunes of their foster fathers.
This definition is historically accurate as a description of the Brehon law tradition of altramm (fosterage), a significant social and legal institution in medieval Irish society. Hallam's reference to it in constitutional history is consistent with scholarly treatment of Irish customary law. However, none of the historical dictionary sources address the modern regulatory system, state intervention powers, or the federal statutory framework. They offer no guidance on licensing, termination of parental rights, or the rights and obligations that define the contemporary foster care relationship.
The historical entries are useful primarily for genealogical research, legal history, or understanding the cultural roots of foster care as a concept, not for any practical legal research into current doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
Foster care law is predominantly state law, subject to federal funding conditions. Licensing standards, placement procedures, foster parent rights in termination and adoption proceedings, and extended foster care eligibility vary significantly by state. Researchers should not generalize across jurisdictions, particularly on questions of whether foster parents have standing to participate in dependency hearings or to challenge removal decisions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia: Child Welfare — Foster Care (Placement, Licensing, Foster Parent Rights) | Child Welfare — Aging Out of Foster Care (Extended Foster Care, Chafee Act)
The Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia: Exclusions — Foster Care Payments