Foster Children’s Sense of Sibling Belonging

Abstract

This article analyzes children's experiences and their perceived sense of belonging to brothers and sisters to assess the significance of social and biological ties for developing identity. Specifically, this article aims to highlight the significance of siblings for children moving from homes to foster homes and back to their original homes again. Most children participating in this study emphasized the continuity of biological relations with their siblings as important for their identity and sense of belonging. At the same time, social ties to both siblings and foster siblings had significance for their perception of themselves. A sense of belonging and identity are, thus, shown to develop in relation to both biological siblings and foster siblings. Keywordsfoster care, siblings, identity, child development, sense of belonging by guest on June 4, 2016 Downloaded from

Sibling Relationships in Adoptive and Fostering Families: A Review of the International Research Literature

“…Children were asked if they have ‘real siblings who do not live with you?’ in the expectation that they would include biological, adoptive, foster siblings and also potentially cousins if the child felt these were ‘real’ sibling‐like relationships. Some qualitative studies concerned with experiences of sibling relationships of fostered and adopted children embraced a more inclusive definition of sibship encompassing biologically related and non‐biological‐related siblings, those placed with and outwith the family of origin and those born before or subsequent to a foster or adoptive placement (Angel, ; Cossar and Neil, ). However, such inclusive definitions were not always built into the study design or sampling strategy and instead were in some cases part of a post hoc analysis (Cossar and Neil, ; Hollows and Nelson, ).…”

“…The fluid nature of sibling relationships, that is, the varying significance or meaning of relationships at different points in time and in different contexts was a theme that recurred in studies. Angel's () work suggested that connections to biological siblings can retain significance even when in separate households or where a sibling remains in the birth family, but that a ‘mutual sense of belonging and care’ was not universal across all sibling relationships. This fluidity of the meaning of family relationships was also evident in Berge and others () study of contact between birth and adoptive families.…”

“…They found no differences in emotional closeness but less behavioural closeness for adoptive siblings. The importance of sibling-like relationships such as relationships between foster siblings was reported in some qualitative studies (Angel, 2014;James and others, 2008) though when measured there was some evidence of less warmth or closeness expressed by birth children of foster carers towards foster children than towards biologically related siblings (Mosek, 2014).…”

Children’s Sense of Belonging in the Context of Post-separation Parental Stalking: Finnish Children’s Experiences of their Family Relations

“…In addition, the findings show that even though children can, to a certain extent, choose with whom and to what they want to belong (Angel, 2014 ), they may not have a say in situations where professionals assess that contact between a child and his or her father is in the child’s best interest, even if the contact poses a risk of continued violence against the child and mother (Nikupeteri & Laitinen, 2015 ; Bruno, 2018 ; Radford & Hester, 2015 ; Staf & Almqvist, 2015 ; Tisdall et al, 2021 ). Children’s sense of not belonging with a stalking father challenges the ideal of joint parenting and children’s continued contact with both parents after the parents’ separation (also Elizabeth et al, 2012 ; Jaffe et al, 2009 ; Radford & Hester, 2015 ) by adding the child’s personal experience of belonging to the evaluation of the quality of family relations.…”

“…Moreover, the study shows that children in the same family do not necessarily share the same sense of belonging (also Swanston et al, 2014 ) and that their sense of belonging may fluctuate. This emphasizes the significance of the fact that professionals understand children’s family relations and sense of belonging as a multifaceted issue rather than think that children’s family relations have a uniform influence on all family members (also Angel, 2014 ).…”