Romanian adoptive families: Stressors, coping strategies and resources

Abstract This study was undertaken to describe the stressors that the Romanian adoptive families confront with, during the different stages of their life cycle, the coping strategies that they adopt and the resources needed and available to them to respond to these stressors. It was used a purposive sample, composed of nine mothers that have adopted children between five months and five years old. The technique used for the data collection was the narrative interview. The main emergent themes in the interviews have been: the desire to have a child and the infertility; the adoption procedure; the uncertainty regarding the moment of placement; the instant adoption of the parental role-status;…