Abstract
This paper presents the results of a research aimed to delimit and analyze the arguments presented by professionals from different social sectors who support and disseminate the so-called “new culture of adoption”. This term designates a set of ideas that have emerged with the Brazilian national movement for adoption ever since the 1980s, encouraging the adoption of institutionalized children and teenagers, as well as their right to familiar and communitarian interaction. Five evaluation categories were obtained from on a Content Analysis of seven lectures presented in the 2015 National Adoption Conference. The results indicate that the current discourse of the “new culture of adoption” praises adoption as a solution to guarantee the rights of institutionalized children and teenagers. However, such understanding disregards the socioeconomic conditions of families of origin, which contribute to their dysfunctions and the consequent withdrawal of their legal authority upon their child. In this perspective, the “new culture of adoption” often disqualifies and blames the families of origin for the institutionalization of their children, thus being framed within the current neoliberal logic for it prioritizes the substitution of the biological family by adoptive parents rather than its rehabilitation through investment in effective social policies.
Keywords:
Adoption; Families; Social exclusion; Neoliberalism