Le contexte adoptif comme observatoire privilégie des modes de réception et de gestion des normes parentales contemporaines

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study financed in the frame of a research program launched by the Caisse Nationale des Allocations Familiales (CNAF), concerning the production and reception of parental norms. The hypothesis guiding this study rests on the idea that the specific context of the adoption represents a privileged observatory of the current parental norms. If today all the parents are confronted to a series of norms concerning parenthood (availability and continuous investment with the child, support of the child in the realization of oneself, concerns for the child’s social integration…), which are sometimes difficult to conciliate, the adoptive parents are confronted with these norms in a completely specific way. The adoptive parents are indeed involved in an evaluative process, which objectifies and formalizes the society’s expectations towards them, before even they become parents. The process of adoption also helps to understand the way the contemporary parents receive and manage the dominant educational standards, and the way they try, in the practice, to conform to them or to get loose from them. For this study, about 30 adoptive parents have been interviewed.