Adottare e lasciarsi adottare

The organising principle of this work is that a form of pedagogical production on adoption is emerging next to a psychological and legal one. This study was born from an extensive and systematic research for reconstructing the complexity of the adoption phenomenon and it aims at examining the anthropological and ethical basis of adoptive parenting. Furthermore it focuses on the interactions between the construction of interpretative theories for explaining adoption -building theoretical categories- and the social developments concerning family, children and education, studying educative ways to support family relationships. The Introduction presents the framework and direction of the thesis followed by the three major sections: the first section suggests that adoption is a multidimensional phenomenon where cultural, social, historical, psychological and educational factors intersect. The second section offers new insights to debates around policy and practice in family support. The third section deals with adoption as a progressive and reciprocal construction of an adoptive pact between parents and child, even if the reciprocity of the choice must not obscure the asymmetry of the responsibility. In the Conclusion we propose key anthropological concepts and concerns involved in adoption. For example when studying fecundity, we use the concept of "natality" to refer to the human ability to bring new ideas, new institutions and new frameworks into reality out of nothing, so we regard adoption as the alternative - and not supplementary- form to the parental bond. Study's focus is the attention at the purposes to adopt, building a vision which would like to be harmonic of the adoption, because we believe that adoption is a personal and family project. Adoptive parenthood and filiation are dynamic and interdependent concepts. The construction of the adoptive bond is based on a reciprocal choice even if enacted at different times and in different ways by parents and children. The reciprocity of the choice can be seen also as a principle of family pedagogy. The framework which underlines the research has the explicit objective of examining ways of building social-educational resilience to enhance the capacity to deal with complexity and change. Pedagogy works in order to guarantee respect for the rights of minors and to promote generativity, which is a broad involvement with the next generation and a creative contribution to society in general.