(FORTUNE Magazine) – Firefighting practice, caring for animals, a stroll through a tree-shaded neighborhood -- and summer classes -- fill the hours for these kids, residents of Boys Town near Omaha, Nebraska. Few of them are technically orphans, since they and many of the kids shown here and on the following pages have at least one living parent. But since the parent can't or won't take care of them, these children are society's orphans. Some of their parents even choose to send their kids to such places in the belief that these institutional descendants of orphanages do a better job raising their children than they could. Whatever the nomenclature, some 200,000 boys and girls live in about 2,000 children's residences or group homes like Boys Town, which went co-ed in 1979. Gone are the grim Dickensian conditions long associated with orphanages. Instead, many homes raise kids with consistency, safety, and love -- all rightful parts of childhood. Proponents of these homes say that they often offer a far fairer deal than foster care. Besides, as former Education Secretary William Bennett points out, ''Foster care is fine if you can get it, but we're running out. We just don't have enough host families.'' He adds: ''I'm about as strong a pro-family conservative as you can get. But when it comes to nonfunctioning families -- and I've seen kids doing school work in hell holes -- you've got to provide alternate care. This is a conclusion this conservative has come to very reluctantly. Get the kids the hell out.'' Hell? Many of society's orphans now living in residential homes have been there, often by way of a succession of neglectful parents or other relatives, intermittent abandonment -- and worse. ''It's a long story,'' said a 5-year- old boy when asked how he came to Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, New York. If his response sounds mature for his years, consider his life so far: Nan Dale, executive director of the home, is ''95% sure'' the boy's mother was a prostitute. He was sexually abused, possibly by a relative, and was sleeping in the same bed as his grandmother when a drug dealer broke into the house and shot her dead. Foster parents couldn't handle the boy, and a social services agency sent him to Children's Village. The federal government, states, and local authorities, foundations, and individual Americans contribute to the average $30,000 each child costs per year. That's a bargain, according to Chester Finn, a founder of Edison Project, a group trying to start a chain of private elementary schools. He says the price beats ''umpteen years on welfare or jail.''