Single foster parents between social engagement and self-centered motives : experiences with and challenges of a contested form of elective affinities

In recent decades significant changes in terms of relationships and family took place. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue that individuals increasingly shape their own biography and that who belongs to the family and who does not, in an individualized society has become an individual choice of the family members. An example of a late modern family with elective affinities is a single parent foster family, where singles choose to take in a child that they have no biological relation with. In the literature, this specific family form is only discussed to a limited extent. In this exploratory, qualitative study fourteen single foster mothers are asked about their experiences as single foster parents and how they deal with the challenges of foster parenting through in-depth interviews. Three areas of tension were found: the tension between self-centered motives to foster and the perception of foster care as a social engagement, the tension between the temporary nature of foster care and the extent to which the foster parents attach to their foster child and the tension between the private aspect of foster care and its institutional side. These experiences of tension and the ways in which two different, identified types of respondents deal with them are discussed by means of the theoretical framework of elective affinities of Beck-Gernsheim.