The substitute family as a psychological and pedagogical phenomenon: structural and functional features and typical difficulties

Background. Modern science needs to define the substitute family as a psychological and pedagogical phenomenon. One of the reasons for this scientific interest is the policy of deinstitutionalization - the state policy for the development of family forms of life for orphans and children left without parental care that focuses on potential parents, the values of motherhood, fatherhood and childhood. Aim. The article aims to identify the structural and functional features of the substitute family and typical difficulties that arise when communicating with a foster child. Materials and methods: 1) the study involved 100 parents participating in the monitoring support of the substitute family. All parents have higher education, are married, have the average age of 40 years, have no more than two own children, adopted children have own relatives; the study was conducted during a year; 2) the essay “I am a parent” was used; 3) methods of mathematical statistics were used, namely the Statistica 6.0 for Windows for processing the data obtained as a result of text content analysis. Results. The structural and functional features of the substitute family are indicated: open external borders, open circulation of information, lack of polarity in the characteristic of intrafamily emotional ties, a large number of specific (non-normative) tasks that require to be solved in the parent system, the need to take care of the child without mutual relationship, the parents' guilt due to dissatisfaction with the results of their educational activities, the establishment of communication between the child and his/her own relatives, the appearance of a sibling subsystem; a number of typical difficulties in substitute families are identified. Conclusion: based on the severity of typical difficulties in the sample of respondents, the authors reflected paradoxical facts in the functioning of the substitute family.