THE VALUE-IDENTIFICATION ORIENTATION OF PROFESSIONAL ADOPTIVE PARENTS WITH DIFFERENT NUMBERS OF ORPHANS

A.A. Aldasheva, M.E. Zelenova, О.N. Sivash

Ajgul’ A. Aldasheva. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

ORCID: 0000-0003-3768-9887

Marina E. Zelenova. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

ORCID: 0000-0002-6921-976X

Ol’ga N. Sivash. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

ORCID: 0000-0002-5222-2858

Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Science, Yaroslavskaya Str., 13/1, Moscow, 129366, Russia.

Acknowledgements. The research was carried out as a government assignment, topic No 0159-2019-0001.

Abstract. The article is one in the series of the research aimed at analyzing requirements for a new type of work called professional adoptive parenthood. 144 adoptive parents took part in the research. For the analysis, they were placed in three groups according to a number of adopted children: AP1) raising one or two foster children; AP2) three to five children and AP3) raising more than six foster children. Different techniques were used to find out the individual and the typical features of adoptive parents that testify to their socio-psychological maturity based on the hierarchy of family values and on social identification specifics. It was found out that the more adoptive children there are in the family the greater is the dis- crepancy between social identity and value orientations of the adoptive parents and meeting the requirements underlying the criteria of family and children’s welfare. In the course of the analysis the authors established some regularity. 1) The larger the adoptive family is the less structured and integral the social identity of the foster parents is; 2) value and identification orientation towards the nearest circle of social interaction (family, friends and neighbors) decreases, while it increases towards large social communities (city dwellers, religious groups and humanity at large); 3) orientation towards professional values and personal self-realization is enhanced. With the growth of the number of foster children in adoptive families there grows social marginality, i.e. family structure and the integrity of the adoptive parents’social identity weak- en, which causes problems in their identification of reference social groups.

Keywords: social identity, value orientations, positive identification, professional foster families, adoptive parents (AP).

DOI: 10.31429/26190567-20-3-153-166