Parentalidade e (des)acolhimento familiar: narrativas de ninhos vazios

Abstract

Facing their violation of rights, children and adolescents can be detached from their family of origin through exceptional and temporary protective measures among which foster care is prioritized. In specialized literature, the temporary relationships experienced in foster care have been problematized and the experience of detachment remains relatively unexplored. Therefore, this study clarifies the emotional experience of the parental couples who become foster families in Foster Family Service. For this, psychoanalytically oriented interviews were conducted with six parental couples involved in a Foster Family Service in Minas Gerais state, mediated by the presentation of an interactive narrative. Transferential narratives were produced and analyzed in the context of a research group in accordance with Multiple Fields Theory. After the analysis of the produced material, it was identified a field occupied by parental couples which we denominated “Ex-mothers and ex-fathers”. Across this field, the foster carers interviewed feel like “ex-mothers and ex-fathers”, sometimes identifying themselves with the biological parents who have been deprived of family rights, fostering the idea that they would be the ones to provide the best care for the children and adolescents in their foster care. To deal with these anxieties, the couples involved engage in a variety of defensive strategies, including an accelerated replacement of foster children and adolescents, a possible suspension of foster care, and the formation of a false self. In this context, we believe that foster carers need to be given greater holding by the technical staff at the service, so that they feel supported in their care work and continue to do it well enough to ensure that foster children receive protective foster care.