ABSTRACT
The ethnographic literature on West Africa contains many references to the sending of children to kin to grow up away from their own parents. In both West Africa and the West Indies, then, children are sent to be reared by kin when the family of orientation cannot, for some reason, manage. In the West Indies it appears to be crisis fostering which is most prominent, while in West Africa purposive fostering is probably more important. The question of whether the West Indian institution is a 'survival' from West Africa via the slaves brought to Caribbean plantations is not relevant at this point. Despite the relatively small number of West African societies for which there is detailed, numerical data on frequency and distribution of foster children, it is becoming clear that this is a pan-West African phenomenon for which no locally appropriate functional explanation will suffice.
