Caring Makes a Family: Understanding Social Representations of Adoption, Foster Care and Child Protection

Adoption and foster care are important forms of family life that challenge traditional understandings of kinship, parenthood, and family relationships. Examining how these family forms are socially represented is essential for understanding public attitudes toward child protection and children’s right to grow up in a family environment. This study analysed social representations of adoption, foster care, and child protection among university students and adults from the general population. A qualitative descriptive study was conducted with 182 participants including Social Work students, participants with a Law background, and adults from the general population without a specific academic background in the legal or social sciences. Data were collected using a researcher-administered open-ended questionnaire and analysed using IRaMuTeQ software. Similarity analysis and Descending Hierarchical Classification (DHC) were used to identify the main discursive structures underlying participants’ representations. Social representations frequently emphasised caregiving capacity, emotional stability, and secure relationships when participants discussed family suitability. Biological relatedness also remained present, indicating the coexistence of biological and caregiving-based meanings of family, without implying that one had fully displaced the other. Profile-specific associations were also identified: Social Work students were more strongly associated with discourses concerning parental competence, child development, and protective intervention, whereas adults from the general population were more strongly associated with family diversity, family harm, and the complexities of child protection decisions.