Social world perception in the family: a comparison of “soc” in adolescent’s biological and foster families

The aim of this work was to investigate the social world perception in families with biological and foster adolescent children. We referred, in particular, to the concept of "Sense of Coherence (SOC)" developed by Aron Antonovsky within his health-oriented approach. In front of critical event, the individual and social coping abilities are reinforced in case of high level of SOC. Therefore we hypothesised that the families that have to face not only a critical normative event as children adolescence, but also paranormative event (even if chosen) as the foster care, have an higher level of SOC the families which didn't chose to face such an experience. We wanted to evaluate the difference between the perceived social support (real and potential) by the two groups of families and wheter the perception of social world correlates with the children adjustment (both in terms of internalising and externalising). Moreover we considered the eventual gender differences. The sample is composed of 220 couples of adolescents' parents with children aged 10-17 years old. 117 were foster couples and 103 biological ones. A questionnaire in two versions (father, mother) including the SOC by Antonovsky, the Social Support Scale by Gigantesco et al., and a reduced version of Achenbach Child Behaviour Checklist, was administered. Multivariate analyses were conducted. The first results confirm that foster parents compared to biological ones showed higher scores both in Sense of Coherence Scale and in Social Support Scale. Futher analyses are in progress.