Foster care in the case of orphaned offspring is much harder to explain from an evolutionary psychology point of view than close kin care. Kin care, i.e assuming the role of the adoptive mother by an aunt, for example, can be explained with class kin selection. However, the adoption of unrelated babies is much harder to explain.
And yet, we humans aren’t alone in adopting unrelated children. Numerous species do, and occasionally adoption happens even across species. One possible function of non-kin adoption would be practising the role of the mother for future children. The desire of girls and young women to hold a baby or play with a toddler can be seen as similar adaptations.
Even in pair-bonded species, It is typically females who adopt babies. Males have been observed adopting babies, however, it is rare. A pair of male Humboldt penguins at a New York zoo, for example, became foster parents to a new hatchling in January 2022.
Evolutionary psychologists distinguish between caregiving (or typically female, correlates with “feeling” or “F” in Jung) and providing (or typically male, correlates with “thinking” (T) in Jung) evolutionary profiles. If males adopt babies they may be somewhat on the caregiving side. Whereas adoption can be an evolutionary advantage for the caregiving-prosocial profile, the provisioning profile would see an adoptive child mostly as a burden regarding their own reproductive success.
My model of evolutionary temperaments is based on ancient subsistence strategies and can be roughly “translated” into Jung/Myers-Briggs and HEXACO maxima for each evolutionary profile.
This model includes some highly relevant and related variables for foster care:
a) alloparenting (foragers) vs close-kin parenting (food-producers)
b) slow life-history strategy (foragers) vs fast life-history strategy (pastoralists)
c) increased parenting effort (forgers) vs increased mating effort (pastoralists)
d) low number of offspring (foragers) vs higher number of offspring (food producers)
Foragers in the past produced roughly replacement-level populations (offspring around every 4 years), whereas food producers had almost exponential growth rates (offspring around every 2 years).
In our modern world farmer types are the most frequent types and we can assume that average fertility rates correspond roughly to farmer fertility rates. Pastoralist types would be above fertility rates due to a faster life-history strategy and increased mating effort. Forager types would be below the average fertility rate.
Foragers are usually careful not to overproduce (e.g. tabus for not having further children while still breastfeeding) and if it happens infanticide is common. However, as parenting effort is high in foragers and alloparenting is practised we can expect to find more voluntary foster parents among forager (especially gatherer) types, than among food-producers who would be more willing to adopt offspring from kin. In forager bands, different members, including the father and other males support a mother who typically does not more than 60% of the parenting. This contrasts with almost 100% in modern societies. We can expect that the most frequent type of foster father is therefore the gatherer type. Famous examples include George Lucas (who raised three children as a single dad), Walt Disney and Ty Burrell.
If pastoralist types tend to overproduce children (Islam, the fastest-growing religion is one in which pastoralist types are highly represented), it should be logical that most children in foster care would be pastoralist types. However, their close kinship networks mitigate this effect. Paradoxically it is the alloparenting forager types who produce the most foster children in my experience. Why should that be the case? Women who are programmed to raise their children in an alloparenting system may easily be overwhelmed with parenting tasks in a system that relies on close kin for parenting due to the lack of close kin. Forager type women have fewer siblings or cousins they can rely on for help. Moreover, I have argued that forager types are often neurodiverse, with such conditions as ASD or ADHD and often struggle with farmer type (9-5 routine) jobs and therefore supporting children. This idea is supported by the high incidence of ASD and ADHD among foster children themselves due to the high hereditability of these conditions.
Forager type women would also be the first to suffer from postpartum depression (PPD) due to the perceived lack of expected support. Perhaps the current greatest predictor of PPD is the assessment of psychiatric disorders both prior to and during pregnancy as well as the incidence of such disorder in the family. Exactly how postpartum depression unfolds is somewhat unpredictable. For most women, the symptoms go away without treatment, but about 20% of women will still have significant depressive symptoms after one year. All these aren’t exactly favourable conditions for raising children. A famous example is Marilyn Monroe’s mother who suffered from depression and schizophrenia.
When it comes to forager type fathers the situation can be equally difficult. Life-history strategies would make forager type fathers get married later and have children later in life. This effect is amplified by the above-mentioned difficulties of finding and keeping a satisfying job. Plus, forager males may have considerable difficulties attracting a mate in a materialistic farmer-herder world. It is a well-known fact that fathers of neurodiverse children tend to be far older than average by the time they have their first child. This means that the father may not be alive anymore before the child has grown up.
I have suggested that forager type children are the famous orchid children known from psychological research. This explains why so many celebrities were foster children themselves (John Lennon, Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Maya Angelou, etc.) as frequently as they are foster parents. Forager type children are typically highly sensitive and what is called “high reactive babies”, who are also often called “colicky”. Both nutrition (wheat, dairy) and stimulus overload may lead to these babies crying a lot and sleeping much less than other babies. This is a further factor in making parenting a much tougher than average job for forager type mothers.
What we see in foster children is a high rate of “problematic” behaviour ranging from oppositional defiant disorder to substance abuse. I have argued that this seemingly anti-social behaviour is due to hunter-gatherer egalitarianism. Problems with foster children often start in primary school when the children defy authority. Coercion is counterproductive and produces more defiant and even anti-social behaviour from the child. Hunter-gatherers use no coercive means in child-rearing whatsoever. In our modern world coercion can’t always be avoided, however, if the child is treated with respect and kindness at least escalatory conflict can be avoided.
Census data shows that more than half of the children in Canadian foster homes are indigenous, despite them making up less than 8% of the country's child population. In Manitoba, approximately 90% of children in care are indigenous.(source: BBC)
Many of the indigenous children in Canadian foster care are mistreated, suffer from PTSD and have high suicide rates. The natives see the situation as a continuation of the old system of residential schools:
The removal of children from indigenous homes has been a part of Canadian life since its early days as a European colony. Beginning in the 1880s, some 150,000 First Nations, Métis, or Inuit children were taken away from their families to be placed in residential schools..A landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which delivered its final report in 2015, found that sexual and physical abuse at residential schools was widespread. It estimated that at least 4,000 indigenous children died in those schools, mainly from disease or malnourishment.The disproportionate removal of indigenous children by welfare agencies was part of the legacy of residential schools, which deprived their pupils of positive parenting, self-worth and a sense of identity, said the TRC."Children who were abused in the schools sometimes went on to abuse others," the commission wrote. "Many students who spoke to the Commission said they developed addictions as a means of coping. Students who were treated and punished like prisoners in the schools often graduated to real prisons."
We can see the same consequences, albeit, on a much more massive scale, that can be observed in foster children in general: ODD, substance abuse, and anti-social behaviour. The situation is often very similar in other areas with forager populations. Native American children make up less than 15 percent of South Dakota’s child population but represent more than half of kids in foster care. Foragers all over the world are suffering from high rates of poverty, depression, and suicide. Taking away their children and putting them into foster care only adds to their plight.
Future research in this area could avoid a lot of misunderstanding and human suffering, both on the side of the foster child as well as the foster parents. While hunter-gatherer type children can be difficult, they can be a source of joy and happiness like all children when treated correctly. They display a high level of curiosity and an innate sense of fairness and justice and often excel in the humanities or science and technology. As mentioned above: hunter-gatherer type children are orchid children who need the right kind of care or there is a high risk of them withering away.
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