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Cultural Identity and Internationally Adopted Children: Qualitative Approach to Parental Representations

Approximately 30 000 children are adopted across national borders each year. A review of the literature on the cultural belonging of these internationally adopted children shows substantial differences between the literature from English-speaking countries and that from France and Europe in general....

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Autores principales: Harf, Aurélie, Skandrani, Sara, Sibeoni, Jordan, Pontvert, Caroline, Revah-Levy, Anne, Moro, Marie Rose
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4361487/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25775255
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0119635
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author Harf, Aurélie
Skandrani, Sara
Sibeoni, Jordan
Pontvert, Caroline
Revah-Levy, Anne
Moro, Marie Rose
author_facet Harf, Aurélie
Skandrani, Sara
Sibeoni, Jordan
Pontvert, Caroline
Revah-Levy, Anne
Moro, Marie Rose
author_sort Harf, Aurélie
collection PubMed
description Approximately 30 000 children are adopted across national borders each year. A review of the literature on the cultural belonging of these internationally adopted children shows substantial differences between the literature from English-speaking countries and that from France and Europe in general. The objective of this study is to start from the discourse of French adoptive parents to explore their representations of their child's cultural belonging and their positions (their thoughts and representations) concerning connections with the child's country of birth and its culture. The study includes 51 French parents who adopted one or more children internationally. Each parent participated in a semi-structured interview, focused on the adoption procedure and their current associations with the child's birth country. The interviews were analyzed according to a qualitative phenomenological method, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The principal themes that emerged from our analysis of the interviews made it possible to classify the parents into three different groups. The first group maintained no association with the child's country of birth and refused any multiplicity of cultural identities. The second group actively maintained regular associations with the child's country of birth and culture and affirmed that their family was multicultural. Finally, the third group adapted their associations with the child's birth country and its culture according to the child's questions and interests. Exploring parental representations of the adopted child enables professionals involved in adoption to provide better support to these families and to do preventive work at the level of family interactions.
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spelling pubmed-43614872015-03-23 Cultural Identity and Internationally Adopted Children: Qualitative Approach to Parental Representations Harf, Aurélie Skandrani, Sara Sibeoni, Jordan Pontvert, Caroline Revah-Levy, Anne Moro, Marie Rose PLoS One Research Article Approximately 30 000 children are adopted across national borders each year. A review of the literature on the cultural belonging of these internationally adopted children shows substantial differences between the literature from English-speaking countries and that from France and Europe in general. The objective of this study is to start from the discourse of French adoptive parents to explore their representations of their child's cultural belonging and their positions (their thoughts and representations) concerning connections with the child's country of birth and its culture. The study includes 51 French parents who adopted one or more children internationally. Each parent participated in a semi-structured interview, focused on the adoption procedure and their current associations with the child's birth country. The interviews were analyzed according to a qualitative phenomenological method, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The principal themes that emerged from our analysis of the interviews made it possible to classify the parents into three different groups. The first group maintained no association with the child's country of birth and refused any multiplicity of cultural identities. The second group actively maintained regular associations with the child's country of birth and culture and affirmed that their family was multicultural. Finally, the third group adapted their associations with the child's birth country and its culture according to the child's questions and interests. Exploring parental representations of the adopted child enables professionals involved in adoption to provide better support to these families and to do preventive work at the level of family interactions. Public Library of Science 2015-03-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4361487/ /pubmed/25775255 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0119635 Text en © 2015 Harf et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Harf, Aurélie
Skandrani, Sara
Sibeoni, Jordan
Pontvert, Caroline
Revah-Levy, Anne
Moro, Marie Rose
Cultural Identity and Internationally Adopted Children: Qualitative Approach to Parental Representations
title Cultural Identity and Internationally Adopted Children: Qualitative Approach to Parental Representations
title_full Cultural Identity and Internationally Adopted Children: Qualitative Approach to Parental Representations
title_fullStr Cultural Identity and Internationally Adopted Children: Qualitative Approach to Parental Representations
title_full_unstemmed Cultural Identity and Internationally Adopted Children: Qualitative Approach to Parental Representations
title_short Cultural Identity and Internationally Adopted Children: Qualitative Approach to Parental Representations
title_sort cultural identity and internationally adopted children: qualitative approach to parental representations
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4361487/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25775255
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0119635
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