Social identity and value orientations of adoptive parents with different numbers of children

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of social identity and value orientation characteristics of professional adoptive parents. The results of the empirical study have demonstrated a positive correlation between the number of orphans adopted into a family, the structure of a positive social identity and value orientations of adoptive parents. The study has established that with an increase in the number of children in a family there is a tendency towards social marginality, lowered structuredness and coherence of adoptive parents’ social identity, difficulties in identifying benchmark social groups. It has been shown that in their identification process the adoptive parents with many adopted children are more likely to choose a group based on the criteria related to their profession and to a lesser extent opt for their immediate social network groups. The study has established that the hierarchy of values of adoptive parents with many adopted children significantly differs from the values profile of adoptive parents with one or two adopted children.

Keywords

• social identity
• positive personal identification
• life values
• professional adoptive parents