CEMS Seminar Series: 'Fostering and Adoption in Eighteenth-Century Britain'

The majority of research on the history of fostering and adoption in Britain has focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when charitable and state provision expanded dramatically. However, these practices evolved out of decades of informal, interpersonal fostering and adoption as ways of caring for children who needed additional parental support. Examining case studies from both ends of the social spectrum - the labouring poor and the landed gentry - this paper investigates the variety of circumstances that led to children being fostered, and the relationships that evolved between child and foster-parent. Examining fostering and adoption provides new perspectives on how family life in the past functioned, the affective and instrumental significance of relationships beyond blood and marriage, and the value of fostering as a form of care work.