Overall, a care network is a group that provides care for the child. It encompasses a myriad of options including professionals, immediate and extended family, and agencies. Communal care is best described as the shared duty of caring for a child or children living in the immediate community. In Lancy (2015), he best describes this when he is trying to match the children to their mothers. In this case, the children are as comfortable with their biological mother as they are with any of the other women in the group (p. 120). The society that Lancy was describing is an African polygynous tribe where communal care is common. The care of the children is spread out amongst the community and not left all to the mother. The passing of a child between
