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10 - Good Investments: Foster Parent Representations of Their Foster Children

from Part Three - Clinical Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2009

By
John P. Ackerman  and
Mary Dozier
Edited by
Ofra Mayseless
John P. Ackerman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware
Mary Dozier
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware
Ofra Mayseless
Affiliation:
University of Haifa, Israel
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Summary

Abstract

This chapter explores the role of foster parent investment in forming parenting representations of foster children. Factors that influence foster parent investment are considered including biological unrelatedness, early emotional and physiological dysregulation, caregiving motives, and child effects. This chapter suggests that highly invested foster parenting may serve as a protective factor for children who have experienced disruptions in care. Empirical evidence is provided from several recent studies examining biologically unrelated caregivers and the importance of caregiver investment to the psychosocial development of children placed with alternative caregivers. A method for assessing foster parent investment is described. Lastly, clinical implications drawing from extant research on caregiver investment and the attachment needs of young foster children are discussed.

Foster parents become surrogate caregivers for children who have experienced disruptions in care and early inadequate care. The foster parent is not the birth parent of a foster child and therefore, may experience the internalization of the parent–child relationship differently from a biological parent. Additionally, the foster parent faces a number of potential barriers in forming optimal representations of a foster child. In this chapter, we highlight the unique contribution of foster parent investment to a foster child's emotional security and emerging sense of self. Foster parents provide care for high-risk children who may need high levels of acceptance and commitment to adjust to early caregiving failures. These caregivers face the task of becoming invested in children to whom they did not give birth and who often have uncertain placement futures.

Type
Chapter
Information
Parenting Representations
Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications
 , pp. 296 - 318
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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