fosterage

Some groups may have practiced “fosterage”: the exchange of children to cement alliances.

I was always a dependent thing, wanting fosterage and support.

Connected apparently with the tribal sentiment were the strange customs of fosterage and gossipred.

Conary would not condemn them to death, as the people begged him to do, but spared them for the sake of his kinship in fosterage.

A child in fosterage was reared and educated suitably for the position it was destined to fill in life.