Un figlio così diverso da noi: essere genitori di un figlio adottato di diversa etnia

[Autom. eng. transl.] International adoption presupposes the encounter between two cultures: this task - by now evident since children today are adopted at an average age of more than 5 years, and therefore retain memories of faces and environments linked to their origin - it is also essential if a very small child is adopted. The "intercultural model" seems to be better suited to understanding this challenge, allowing the mutual appreciation of the cultures involved, with at least partially positive image of what happened before the adoption. If, in fact, they feel that the child has had and retains something good from its origin, the adoptive parents will receive it as a precious gift, and the figures who previously took care of the child will be seen in some way as allies: an indispensable condition for some form of exchange and intertwining between the two different roots. The adopted adolescent, in fact, in order to arrive at the construction of his own ethnic identity, is called to integrate two different ethnicities, confronting himself with two elements ascribed to great weight: his own adoptive condition and his own different ethnic origin. The most complex position, but also the one that from research seems linked to the highest levels of well-being of the adopted child, if accompanied and supported in this task by his parents, is the dual or integrated ethnic identity, which derives from the capacity of the adoptee to enhance both ethnic references over time. It should also be emphasized that the value that the adopted adolescent decides to give to his own ethnicity largely depends on the value that the adoptive parents and the social context generally attribute to them.