Lukyanenko N. Social-Psychological Determinants of Foster Parenting Awareness of a Family.

Dissertation research focuses on identification of social-psychological determinants that impact the process of building foster parenting awareness. The difference in parenting awareness between biological and foster parents is defined. The biological parents have upbringing and educational orientation, while foster parents have social orientation. It was defined that the systematic changes taking place as a result of transformation of a family into a foster family are as follows: establishment of new family structure and relationships related to a need to change the personal relationship in the family and redistribution and establishment of the new functional links and responsibilities; developing attitude to a child as a valuable personality and acceptance of a child with his or her individual-psychological characteristics and problems in development; accepting social responsibility and orientation to child's socialization related to a need for targeted re-socialization and further socialization of a foster child. The components of conscious foster parenting are "unconditional acceptance of a child", "parenting confidence", "emotional connection", "family openness". It was proved that the main obstacle for parenting awareness of foster parents is orientation to traditional family values without taking into account specifics of factor parenting.