Sijaisvanhemmuus nyky-Venäjällä - työtä vai rakkautta?

Idäntutkimus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-31
Author(s):  
Žanna Tšernova ◽  
Meri Kulmala

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan hoivan käsitteen kautta sijaisvanhemmuuden ammatillistumista Venäjällä meneillään olevan lastensuojelun sijaishuollon uudistamisen kontekstissa. Analysoimme, kuinka lapsikylässä asuvat sijaisvanhemmat näkevät ja määrittelevät oman roolinsa ja toimintansa tarkoituksen pohjaten viidessä eri venäläisessä lapsikylässä sijaisvanhempien parissa toteutettuihin fokusryhmäkeskusteluihin ja teemahaastatteluihin. Sijaisvanhemmuus ymmärretään dikotomisesti joko rakkautena tai työnä. Käsitys hoivasta rakkautena ymmärretään moraalisena velvollisuutena ja eettisenä arvona. Tällöin kiistetään mahdollisuus hoivan virallistamiseen ja sen alistamiseen säännöille ja byrokratian ja markkinavoimien sanelulle. Hoivan määritteleminen työnä puolestaan tekee sijaisvanhemmille mahdolliseksi rationalisoida omaa toimintaansa ja problematisoida sijaisvanhemmuuden statusta yhteiskunnassa. Tällöin sijaisvanhemmuuden ammatillistuminen nähdään ratkaisuna lukuisille ongelmille, joihin sijaisvanhemmat törmäävät, ja sijaisperheissä tapahtuvan hoivan aseman parantamisena.   Foster parenting in contemporary Russia - work or love? The article explores the professionalisation of foster parenting in the context of the ongoing child welfare and so-called alternative care reforms in Russia through the concept of ‘care’. We analyse how foster parents who live in children’s villages see and define their role and the meaning of their activity based on focus group and thematic interviews with foster parents in five children’s villages in Russia. Foster parenting is understood through a dichotomy of ‘love’ and ‘work’. Seeing foster parenting as love is based on an understanding of it as a moral obligation and ethical value. In such a case, it becomes impossible to consider care as something official that exists under regulation and is led by bureaucratic and market principles. Understanding care as work, in turn, makes it possible for foster parents to rationalise their own activity and problematise their status in Russian society. In this case, the professionalisation of foster parenting is seen as a solution to multiple problems that foster parents face, and to the improvement of the status of this type of care more generally.

Author(s):  
Catherine E. Rymph

This chapter examines the ambiguity of the foster parent role in the post-World War II period, looking particularly at analogies to other kinds of parenting. It explores efforts by child welfare professionals to reconcile their ambivalent feelings about foster parents through the creation and promotion of national standards for foster care and foster parenting. The chapter looks closely at professional writings about the foster mother role and the reasons why foster fathers received so little attention. It also examines the ways in which foster parents resisted their proscribed role, notably through attempting to adopt children in their care.


2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Tristram Engelhardt

AbstractOnce God is no longer recognized as the ground and the enforcer of morality, the character and force of morality undergoes a significant change, a point made by G.E.M. Anscombe in her observation that without God the significance of morality is changed, as the word criminal would be changed if there were no criminal law and criminal courts. There is no longer in principle a God's-eye perspective from which one can envisage setting moral pluralism aside. In addition, it becomes impossible to show that morality should always trump concerns of prudence, concerns for one's own non-moral interests and the interests of those to whom one is close. Immanuel Kant's attempt to maintain the unity of morality and the force of moral obligation by invoking the idea of God and the postulates of pure practical reason (i.e., God and immortality) are explored and assessed. Hegel's reconstruction of the status of moral obligation is also examined, given his attempt to eschew Kant's thing-in-itself, as well as Kant's at least possible transcendent God. Severed from any metaphysical anchor, morality gains a contingent content from socio-historical context and its enforcement from the state. Hegel's disengagement from a transcendent God marks a watershed in the place of God in philosophical reflections regarding the status of moral obligations on the European continent. Anscombe is vindicated. Absent the presence of God, there is an important change in the force of moral obligation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 715-747
Author(s):  
Clarie Breen ◽  
Jenny Krutzinna ◽  
Katre Luhamaa ◽  
Marit Skivenes

Abstract This paper examines what set of familial circumstances allow for the justifiable interference with the right to respect for family life under Article 8, echr. We analyse all the Courts’ judgments on adoptions from care to find out what the Court means by a “family unit” and the “child´s best interest”. Our analysis show that the status and respect of the child’s de facto family life is changing. This resonates with a view that children do not only have formal rights, but that they are recognised as individuals within the family unit that states and courts must address directly. Family is both biological parents and child relationships, as well between children and foster parents, and to a more limited extent between siblings themselves. The Court’s understanding of family is in line with the theoretical literature, wherein the concept of family reflects the bonds created by personal, caring relationships and activities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia E. Tikhоnova

This article reveals that, during the last 15 years, drastic shifts have occurred in the subjective social structure of Russian society: the people for the most part no longer consider themselves to be “social outsiders”, while Russian society itself has become a society undoubtedly dominated by a subjective middle-class, albeit predominantly a lower middle-class. However, such a positive shift does not equal Russians being completely satisfied with the situation at hand when it comes to stratification, since their actual position in the status hierarchy is currently much lower not only than desired, but also lower than those status positions which they reckon they should be occupying in this hierarchy “in all fairness”. Russian people’s dissatisfaction is mostly a result of them considering opportunities for success and prosperity to be associated with the social, economic and cultural capital of one’s parents, as well as with various unlawful practices (such as corruption, bribery), not only with one’s hard work or quality education. These views seem to be stable over time, and to some extent they are similar to the views of German people. However, in the eyes of Russians various unlawful practices (primarily bribery) play a greater role when it comes to achieving success in life. In addition to that, one’s parents’ education, as well as one’s own education, hard work and ambition play a slightly less significant role (which is decreasing year after year) in Russia. This means that, as time passes, more Russian people are becoming convinced that a person’s personal efforts and goals are not a key factor in achieving life success and high status positions in Russian society. Statistical verification indicates that these views are objectively justified, since, according to the former, upper strata of Russian society are becoming increasingly more closed, with lower strata starting to close as well. High indexes of self-reproduction of opposing status groups within mass layers of the population, together with an increasing polarization of the population (primarily young people) – these are all dangerous tendencies in terms of their socio-political and economic consequences, which lead to authorities being delegitimized, as well as Russian people losing their motivation to achieve success in life through their own efforts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
Tatyana E. Lomova ◽  

The article analyses women’s organizations of modern Russia as a component of civil society. The study is based on the gender approach and materials analyzed include statistical data, results of opinion polls, websites of women’s organizations, interviews and other documents. The women’s movement is considered as one of the social practices in the context of the theory of practices proposed by Pierre Bourdie, Robert Connell and others. The author notes that the peak of women’s activity in Russia was in the 1990s, when women were uniting to solve social problems, such as women’s unemployment, human trafficking, etc. During that time, the women’s movement in Russia was developing with the support of international women’s organizations and foreign charity funds, but after the adoption of the so-called law on “foreign agents” many funds suspended or limited their activities in Russia. As a result, nowadays, many Russian NGOs including women’s organizations are facing financial problems. NGOs recognized as a “foreign agent” experience the most difficulties while organizations with the status of socially oriented NGOs can receive government’s support and funding. Using the method of content analysis, the author revealed that names of Russian women’s organizations often include such words as “family”, “childhood”, and “motherhood”, whereas the words “woman”/“women” and ‘women’s’ are rarely used. This is due to the fact that in Russian society there are still widespread views that the range of women’s interests should be limited to the private sphere. At the same time, the gender theory and feminism are often presented as attempts to undermine national traditions. As a result, a woman is considered as an object of social policy rather than a subject of social processes. The majority of Russian women’s organizations focus on charity work, but specific women’s interests and problems are often ignored or undervalued. However, domestic violence, labour market discrimination, and other gender problems can be solved only through the close interaction of the “third sector”, business, and government.


Obiter ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Glynis van der Walt

Currently, South Africa has an estimated 5,2 million abandoned children in need of care. Facing the highest rate of deaths worldwide from HIV/AIDS, and as a developing country, many children are left in need of care. The current article considers the status of alternative care in South Africa in light of the State’s ability to provide appropriate alternative care for those in need thereof.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-493
Author(s):  
Kathryn E. Goldfarb

Abstract This article explores the legal norms and regulatory mechanisms in Japan that structure child welfare placement decisions, focusing specifically on the legal category of “parental rights.” It is suggested that the ways child welfare officers and caregivers understand the concept of “rights”—both those of the biological parent(s) and the child—construe kinship relationships as problems to be managed, but with a particular orientation toward what is called in the article the temporality of attachment. Child welfare caseworkers’ understandings of legal categories, processes, and forms of documentation (such as the Japanese family registry) produce particular forms of kinship that prioritize a child's possible future relationship with an absent parent, above and beyond the day-to-day relationships children might develop with alternative caregivers such as foster parents. Despite the fact that the author's Japanese interlocutors often described kinship as an immutable relationship of blood ties, the author shows how kinship is in fact produced through specific encounters between (mostly absent) parents and their children, child welfare caseworkers, and foster and institutional caregivers, scaffolded by their engagement with legal and bureaucratic regimes. The article explores what parenthood means within Japanese child welfare, both as a temporalized form of relationality and as a set of legally structured claims to the right to care.


Author(s):  
Catherine E. Rymph

This chapter examines the role of foster parents as workers, an idea rooted in the nineteenth century role of the “boarding mother.” Child Welfare professionals, foster parents, and the public struggled over the proper balance between paying adequate board to foster parents while ensuring that desire to nurture a child remained the paramount motivation. By the 1960s, foster parents began organizing themselves, culminating in the formation of the National Foster Parents Association in 1971.


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