In this chapter, our attention turns from children seen as infinitely precious by their families to children who live at the margins of our gaze. We will look closely at an issue that confronts anyone who seeks to understand the nature, goal, and meaning of religious responses to children: those abandoned and waiting in foster-care systems.

The problem of children in foster care is a global one. One can turn the corner in almost any city in the world and face the starkness of their need. Foster care – defined as the care for children who have been abandoned or taken away from their family by the state, who have not been adopted into a permanent home, and who typically live in this situation until the age of 18 – is largely paid for and regulated by states or federal governments, and, in some countries, administered by private charities or religious organizations. What is distinctive about foster care, as opposed to adoption, is that the care is a contractual negotiation, based on economic relationships with strangers and not on kinship bonds.