Filhos por adoção: um estudo sobre o seu processo educativo em famílias com e sem filhos biológicos

Abstract

The difficulties related with children education seem to be universal, however, very oftenly, inside the adoptive filiations, some aspects from the educational process emerge reinforced with an extrapolated magnitude significance. This is a quantitative research and it s main purpose was to identify the difficulties experienced by adoptive parents during the educational process of adoptive children; our intention was to compare exclusive adoptive parents and biological-adoptive ones aiming to find out similarities and differences between the two family profiles. Specifically, we investigated the following dimensions; behavior problems, school difficulties and parents difficulties in administrating the educational limits. Data were collected using a questionnaire containing open and objective questions and the participants were 200 adoptive parents, being 100 exclusively adoptive and 100 biological-adoptive. The socio-demographical variables characterized the majority of parents as being white-skinned, officially married or in stable union, having complete or incomplete college graduation, perceiving more than 9 brazilian minimum salaries as monthly family income, professing predominantly the Catholic religion and being in the age group from 31 to 40 years old when the first adoption was made. The results indicated that there aren t significative differences between the two family types in what concerns to the intercurrencies happened during the educational process of their adopted children; the incidence of behavior problems was quite similar in the two family groups; biological-adoptive parents showed less difficulties in administrating educational limits; children educated by exclusive adoptive parents showed less school difficulties; it was possibly to verify that parents social-demographic variables caused no expressive influence on the children educational course, with exception that evangelical and spiritist biological-adoptive parents showed more tendencies of adopting a bigger number of children; in the same family group, it was possible to verify also that children that have parents with college graduation showed a greater number of behavior problems and school difficulties. Other relevant data: there weren t related significative differences in the education of adoptive and biological children; there weren t found expressive differences in the educational problems from early (babies) and late adoptions (over 2-3 years old children), with exception of only children from late adoptions in biological-adoptive families that showed a disposition to have a higher rate of behavior problems and difficulties in school; there was no statistic relation between the reasons that justified the adoptions and the difficulties during the educational process; family resistances to the adoption project can intensify the difficulties faced by parents during the educational process; biological-adoptive parents are more open to late adoptions (elder children); the group of children in our study was composed randomly and it showed a same quantity of girls and boys; the gender of children has not determined a bigger number of behavior problems in both groups of families; the age when the child was told about the adoptive condition had no relation with behavior problems, but it had an expressive importance in what concerns to school difficulties; the majority of adoptive parents don t lay the blame for problems faced during children s education to adoption and the majority of biological-adoptive parents believe that the education of adoptive and biological children is very similar. It follows that the difficulties faced by exclusive adoptive parents and biological-adoptive parents are very similar, although they have different challenges: while exclusive adoptive parents need to elaborate their unconscious conflicts, specially in what concerns to sterility, biological-adoptive parents need to find the equilibrium point in the education of their two types of sons, trying to avoid an excess of expectation and overprotection