Representações sociais sobre crianças institucionalizadas: o quê dizem os adotantes.

Abstract

The present work aims to identify the social representations about institutionalized children built by adopters. Bringing as a guide the Theory of Social Representations, which presents them as common-sense knowledge, constructed and shared within a social group that seeks to understand the objects that surround it, at the same time, elaborate concepts about them, so the subjects build themselves. Through semi-structured interviews such as data collection, it is also intended to question how such representations influence the choices of certain children for adoption by these subjects, since it calls attention to the discrepancy between the numbers of couples enrolled in the National Registry of Adoption in relation to the number of children available for the process. The theme arose after the experience of rethinking situations that occurred during a stage developed during six months in a host institution of Sobral - CE. Finding in people the surprise and denotation of courage, conferred by them, to those who propose to work in this field, denouncing a distorted and interiorized view of both the host system and the subjects that are there. The hypothesis built on the theme is that adoptive families have representations that interfere with the desire to adopt. As a basis for the historical contextualization about the forms of reception, children, adoption, social representations, we count on the studies of Marcílio, Rizzini, Rizzini, Abreu, Faleiros, Ariès, Moscovici, Jodelet, Jovchelovitch, among others. The interviews were conducted with adopters aged 25 to 50 from the cities of Coreaú and Ipueiras, in Ceará, and the data collected were analyzed according to the thematic analysis modality. We found with results that the adopters have representations on the institutionalized children that involve rebellion and suffering, a vision contrary to that destined for children who are not sheltered. The representations about children and the way adopters visualize the adoption process establish a relationship that results in the characteristics of children considered "adoptable."