Foster family: from motivation to successful parenting

Abstract

Nowadays, the problem of protecting the rights and interests of orphaned children and children deprived of parental care is gaining relevance. The family is viewed as a leading institution for child socialization, a guarantor of his/her harmonious development and satisfaction of his/her needs; therefore, foster families as a modern form of temporary family placement for children is currently deemed to be preferential. Experts gradually start to realize the necessity of transition to the “professionalization of care” in general and parenthood in particular, when care is considered as a special type of activity that implies possession of specific skills and abilities. Such activity may go beyond the domestic sphere and take place with the involvement of the family, state, market and non-governmental associations. In view of this, the development of family forms of placement requires creation of mechanisms for the selection and training of adults who intend to take children deprived of parental care into their family. The article presents motivational complexes and values encouraging parents to start a foster family. Replacement family models have been characterized in terms of the educational function implementation being successful or unsuccessful. Successful parenthood criteria have been defined at three levels: child-parent relationships, parents' interactions, interrelation between the family and society. Social and psychological features of foster parents have been analyzed, which features have an impact on successful adaptation of the family in the situation where a child is being taken into the family. The importance of taking account of additional factors that underlie potential success of a foster family has been substantiated. It is emphasized that such gender-related aspects of foster parenthood as the husbands' involvement in doing housework and looking after children, children's gender socialization, single foster parents, instances of domestic violence in foster families, etc. still have not been extensively covered in scientific literature.