title: Childlessness and adoption: the experience of loss as a source of suffering.
abstract: The present work deals with the issue of child's adoption. Adoption is presented as a difficult (stressful) situation for the adopted child, but also for the childless married couple, who has decided to take in the orphaned child. Adoption as a difficult situation is connected with the experience of loss. The childless spouses experience the loss of their biological parenthood, the loss of their biological child, who died during the prenatal period or just after being born, but also the loss of the status of a "normal" family created in accordance with the normative model of a family. The adopted child, on the other hand, experiences the loss of biological parents and biological siblings, the loss of genealogical continuity and of "the bonds of blood". The child must be confronted with the fact that "one, to be adopted, must be first abandoned". The problem with the studies on adoption lies in their theoretical character. Because of that, the psychological understanding of adoption reality is limited.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Theology, Opole University, Opole, Poland. alicja.kalus@xf.pl
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kalus
mesh_terms: D000300:Adoption / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D054540:Child, Orphaned / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007246:Infertility; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*