ABSTRACT
Foster parents provide care to children who cannot remain with their families by bringing these children into their homes. Although this care is meant to be short term and temporary, many children remain with their foster parents for several years and become important members of their foster families. Foster parents are recruited, trained, and supervised by public departments of social services or by private agencies that contract with departments of social services to provide foster care. The characteristics of foster parents in the United States tend to reflect the characteristics of parents throughout the United States. Fifty to sixty years ago, foster parents were primarily middle-income couples, with a mother who often did not work outside the home. Today, foster families are much more structurally and culturally diverse (McFadden, 1996). Although most foster parents today are married, many single women and some single men are foster parents. Foster families come from a wide range of cultural groups and incomes. Many have both birth children and foster children in their families, although others have become foster parents in order to have children in their home.
