The introduction of outsiders is used in many historical communities as a strategy for succession, and adoption proves to be a versatile method of accomplishing this. The first section of this book surveys the range of uses to which adoption can be adapted, which includes finding homes for children from impaired families, providing childless couples with a family life, as well as providing descendants and heirs to property. Adoption has also been used to make individuals eligible to inherit real property or social position from which they would otherwise have been excluded because of inalienability in the case of property or status in the case of position. The creation of fictitious proximate relationships satisfies social demands for stability and conservatism in cases of this sort. Not all the communities surveyed encouraged the adoption of complete strangers for these purposes, and in some cases the choices taken simply promote close relatives in the pecking order. Contemporary concerns have until recently ensured that adoption in the modern Western world was largely concerned with providing homes for disadvantaged children, while at the same time providing a family life for childless couples. Something closer to the ancient world has developed more recently in same-sex adoptions, which have been instituted to enable the parties to ensure the transfer of property rights to their partners.

The question of the role of kinship in Greece and Rome is important in relation to adoption.