Social Representations of Family for Institutionalized Adolescents in a Municipality Northern Fluminense

• Main Authors: Isabela Maciel Vieira, Sabrine Mantuan dos Santos Coutinho
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Faculdade Meridional (IMED) 2019-07-01
• Series: Revista de Psicologia da IMED
• Subjects: adolescência; acolhimento; institucionalização; família; representações sociais
• Online Access: https://seer.imed.edu.br/index.php/revistapsico/article/view/2957

The discussion about the importance of the family for the development and the constitution of the person is not new, and this relevance cannot be rejected. However, there are many families that can’t provide the care and protection for many reasons, which makes the institutionalization of children and adolescents a recurrent reality in the contemporary Brazilian scenario. The research has the intention to investigate the social representation of families to adolescents in a city of the northern fluminense. Ten adolescents were interviewed, both sexes, aged 14 to 17 years old, the results show that the idea of family is directly related to the group and its functions, what brings to believe that such elements probably are part of the family social representation. The data also show that the blood relationship is only a characteristic of the family group and is not a determinant of it, being emphasized the affective relationship developed with other people without the kinship bond. The reducing number of participants make the generalization of the results impossible; however, it brings indications of how this group of adolescents mean the object family.