Abstract
If children in child protection cannot be cared for by their natural parents, should they be adopted or live in foster home? Results from a study of representative samples of populations (n = 12 330), in eight European countries—Austria, England, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway and Spain—and California, USA, reveal that people would recommend adoption over foster care, if a child in public care cannot grow up with their natural parent(s). There are cross-country differences between populations, and examining if institutional context such as type of child protection system explains differences, we find that child maltreatment-oriented systems are more supportive of adoption than other types of systems. Citizens having little confidence in the child protection system were only weakly correlated with preference for adoption. In conclusion, people prefer adoption as placement options for children in care are more than foster homes, and possible this finding reflects a sort of refamalialization of children into the private sphere.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 432-442 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Child and Family Social Work |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 The Authors. Child & Family Social Work published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Funding
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 724460) and from the Research Council of Norway under the Independent Projects – Humanities and Social Science program (grant no. 262773). Funding information
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | |
| European Commission | |
| Norges Forskningsråd | 262773 |
| Horizon 2020 | 724460 |
Keywords
- adoption
- child protection
- cross-country comparison—populations
- foster care