Social orphanhood: concept, causes and consequences

Orphanhood: essence of the concept, causes, types

INTRODUCTION

To live in orphanhood is to shed tears. (Russian proverb)

Childhood is a period when the fundamental qualities of a person are laid, ensuring psychological stability, positive moral orientation towards people, vitality and determination. The spiritual qualities of an individual are not formed spontaneously; they are brought up in conditions of parental love, when the family creates in the child the need to be recognized, the ability to empathize and enjoy other people, and to bear responsibility for himself and others.

In any state and any society there have always been, are and will be orphans and children who, for various reasons, were left without parental care. A child who has lost his parents is a special, truly tragic world. The need to have a family, a father and a mother, is one of the strongest needs of a child.

Orphanhood, as a social phenomenon, has existed for as long as there have been humanities, and is an integral element of civilization.

Orphanhood is a social phenomenon that characterizes the lifestyle of children left without parental care. For a long time, children who lost their parents due to their death were considered orphans. “Orphans are persons under the age of 18 whose both or only parent has died.”

Currently, two concepts are widely used in everyday speech and in theoretical research: orphan (orphanhood) and social orphan (social orphanhood).

Social orphanhood is caused by insufficient efforts of society to overcome and prevent negative phenomena in society, to provide timely assistance for the full development, education and upbringing of the child’s personality.

The exacerbation of this problem today is a consequence of protracted socio-economic transformations in the country, which have led to a weakening of universal, moral and ethical values, a change in the moral foundations of the family, and an increase in the number of families in difficult situations according to social and psychological criteria. The increase in the number of children living without parental care, against the backdrop of a decrease in the overall child population in recent years, places social orphanhood among a number of important national problems.

The object of this course work is orphans and children left without parental care.

The subject of the course work is the social protection of orphans and children without parental care.

The purpose of this course work is to identify the problems of orphanhood in modern Russia and ways to solve them.

Coursework objectives:

1) define the concept of orphanhood and identify its essence;

2) identify the reasons and possible consequences of the actualization of the problem of orphanhood in modern Russia;

3) determine the meaning of orphanhood in modern Russia;

4) determine the priority areas of activity of both the state as a whole and institutions interacting with orphans and children without parental care to solve the problems of orphanhood.

The structure of the course work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, a list of references and sources.

The theoretical and methodological basis was the basic theoretical principles in the field of social policy, social protection, social security, noted in the works of leading scientists.

Sources for preparing the course work are federal and regional legislation, international documents, reporting materials of Rosstat, federal and regional ministries and departments, current accounting materials developed by the territorial body of the Federal State Statistics Service, literary sources, results of author's expert surveys.

Chapter 1 THE CONCEPT OF ORphanhood AND ITS PROBLEMS IN MODERN RUSSIA

1. Orphanhood: essence of the concept, causes, types

Orphans are children under the age of 18 whose both or only parent has died.

A social orphan is a child who has biological parents, but for some reason they do not raise the child and do not care for him. In this case, society and the state take care of children. [7 p.192] These are children whose parents are not legally deprived of parental rights, but do not actually care about their children. Social orphanhood is a phenomenon caused by the presence in society of children left without parental care due to deprivation of their parental rights, recognition of parents as incompetent, or missing. [7 p. 299]

Orphanhood as a social phenomenon has existed as long as human society and is an integral element of civilization. At all times, wars, epidemics, natural disasters, and other causes led to the death of parents, as a result of which children became orphans. With the emergence of class society, the so-called “social orphanhood” also appears, when children are deprived of parental care due to the latter’s unwillingness or inability to fulfill parental responsibilities, due to which parents abandon the child or are removed from his upbringing[8 p. 51].

An orphan is a child who is temporarily or permanently deprived of his family environment, or cannot remain in such an environment, and is entitled to special protection and assistance provided by the state.

According to the law of the Russian Federation “On additional guarantees for the social protection of orphans and children left without parental care,” guardianship and trusteeship are the norm for the placement of such children for the maintenance, upbringing, education, protection of their rights and interests. Guardianship is established over children under the age of 14; guardianship is established over this category of children aged 14 to 18 years. In the future, when using the word “orphan”, we will mean a child left without parental care and a social orphan.

Children are considered orphans due to parents’ evasion of their upbringing or protection of their rights and interests, parents’ refusal to take their children from educational, medical institutions, social welfare institutions and other similar institutions, and in other cases of recognizing a child without parental care in in accordance with the procedure established by law. The largest category of orphans consists of children whose parents have been deprived of parental rights as a result of social behavior.

Social orphans are children with parents who are deprived of parental rights and suffer from severe chronic illnesses, including mental illnesses, alcoholism, drug addiction and others. There is a large group of orphans who were abandoned by their parents for various reasons (the most often abandoned are single mothers who gave birth to children out of wedlock, as well as parents whose children were born with disorders of psychophysical development).

Scientists also identify the so-called category of “hidden orphans,” which include children whose situation is hidden from the state and they do not receive help for a long time. Some children themselves leave their dysfunctional families due to poor and even cruel treatment.

Thus, a social orphan is a child who has biological parents, but for some reason they do not raise the child and do not care for him. In future work we will rely on this concept. In this case, the state takes care of the children. These are also children whose parents are not legally deprived of parental rights, but do not actually care about their children. Social orphanhood is considered as a social phenomenon caused by the presence in society of children left without parental care due to deprivation of their parental rights, recognition of parents as incompetent, missing, and so on.

Currently, in the Russian public consciousness, such a phenomenon as social orphanhood is associated with a whole complex of reasons: political, social, medical, psychological and other reasons. The causes of social orphanhood are natural disasters and social upheavals - wars, interethnic conflicts and other phenomena that give rise to problems of refugees and internally displaced persons. [9 p. 259] The immediate causes of social orphanhood include the following:

– voluntary abandonment of parents (usually mothers) from their minor child, most often this is abandonment of a newborn in a maternity hospital. From a legal point of view, child abandonment is a legal act that is officially confirmed by a special legal document. Within 3 months, the parents (mother) can change their decision and the child can be returned to the family;

– forced removal of a child from the family, when in order to protect the rights, life and interests of the child, parents are deprived of parental rights. This mainly happens with dysfunctional families in which parents suffer from alcoholism, drug addiction, lead an antisocial lifestyle, are incompetent, and so on. Deprivation of parental rights is also a legal act that is carried out by a court decision and documented in a special legal document.

The conditions that provoke social orphanhood include the following [32 p.3]:

1. Socio-economic: unemployment, inability to obtain housing, decreased wages, decreased overall material standard of living, constant rise in prices, inability to organize recreational activities and recreation for children, family impoverishment, insufficient economic support for a young family;
2. family crisis: family breakdown, an increase in the number of illegitimate children, early motherhood, an increase in family alcoholism, drug addiction, substance abuse among parents, an increase in crime (parents are serving sentences in prisons, isolation wards, colonies, and so on, and children are in orphanages);
3. pedagogical failure of the family: loss of traditions, lack of communication between generations, child neglect, decreased value of the family in society, decreased educational potential of the education system, decreased parental responsibility for raising children, violation of children’s rights, cruelty to the child;
4. a decrease in the educational potential of the education system: a bias towards training, a decrease in the number of children's public organizations, a narrowing of the scope of extracurricular activities, a reorientation of the additional education system towards educational services;
5. ineffective government policy in the development of clear legal norms regulating the responsibility of parents for the upbringing of their children;
6. the disappearance of the system of educational work with children, adolescents and parents at the place of residence;
7. the development of children's and youth subcultures that do not take into account traditional norms of spirituality and morality;
8. the growing influence of mass media on the subculture of the younger generation. As a consequence, there is a generation gap, propaganda through the media of new forms and values ​​of behavior of children and youth;
9. insufficient development of services for children, including protection of their rights.

Of the above conditions that give rise to social orphanhood, one of the fundamental ones is the crisis of the modern family. The crisis of the modern family has negatively affected the state of childhood in the country, leading to an increase in social orphanhood and an increase in the number of such specific institutions as orphanages and boarding schools. For the first time, their overconsolidation became a problem.

The problem of a mother abandoning her newborn child is a common social phenomenon. The role of social factors in the formation of distortions in maternal behavior is so great and obvious that many researchers directly reduce the entire controversial problem of the causation of social orphanhood to them.

Conclusion: Firstly, a social orphan is a child who has biological parents, but for some reason they do not raise the child and do not care for him.

Secondly, the main causes of orphanhood in our country are the abandonment of a child in a maternity hospital, the death or incurable illness of the child’s parents, as well as the deprivation of parental rights of the child’s parents due to malicious failure by them to fulfill their duties, that is, social disorganization of the family, financial economic difficulties, antisocial behavior of parents (drunkenness, drug addiction, criminal behavior).

Thirdly, social orphanhood continues to grow in Russia; specialized institutions are filled with children left without parental care. In this regard, the issue of preventing social orphanhood and the development of this technology in different departments and at different levels is urgent.

1.2 Problems of orphanhood in modern Russia

The problem of orphanhood is today a problem characteristic of many developed and developing countries. The spread of such a phenomenon as social orphanhood in our country is due to social conditions and processes in society that characterize the development of Russia in the 20th century. and associated with three wars (the First World War, the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War), the terror of the 20-30s. XX century, as well as the consequences of perestroika in the late 80s - early 90s of the last century.

It is incredible, but it is a fact that in modern, peaceful Russia, Russia of the 21st century, the number of orphans is much greater than in the post-war years. In fact, Russia is now experiencing the 3rd wave of orphanhood, which was undoubtedly a consequence of the socio-economic upheavals of the 90s of the last century.

In each country, a system of social alternative solutions relating to the upbringing and development of a child is created, developed and strengthened. These include the following possible options:

Problems of social orphanhood in Russia

Social orphanhood is the most acute pedagogical and psychological problem in the Russian Federation.

Every year, interest in this negative phenomenon is increasing at a rapid pace. First of all, this can be explained by the considerable number of children who were left without parental care, as well as economic and political instability in the country.

The factors influencing the presence of the problem of social orphanhood in Russia include the following:

• poor standard of living for most families in Russia, low threshold of public morality;
• the crisis situation of the family institution as a whole, an incorrect perception of what a family should be;
• social deviations in parents, indifference to the child, refusal to raise him;
• an increase in the number of children born out of wedlock, which contributes to their growth not in a complete family;
• Parents maintaining an antisocial lifestyle, resulting in a lack of attention, love and education towards children.

Social orphans

A social orphan is a child who has a parent or parents who abandoned him or were deprived of parental rights. This is a child who is not cared for by either parents or relatives.

Social orphans lose their parents as a result of various social, economic, moral and psychological reasons and become orphans with biological parents who are still alive.

Today social orphans make up 80% of orphans. Only the remaining percentage are orphans who have no living parents.

UNICEF classifies the following groups as social orphans:

• children who have lost contact with their families and are living in shelters;
• children who maintain contact with their families and live on the streets day and night due to poverty, exploitation and abuse at home;
• children who grew up in families, abandoned them for many reasons and live on the streets.

A sharp increase in the number of social orphans is observed in many countries. Without protection, social orphans are exposed to violence, sexual exploitation and HIV infection.

The number of orphans in the world is much higher in underdeveloped countries and countries at war than in developed countries.

Parents leave their children in an orphanage out of need or hopelessness.

Psychosocial consequences of orphanhood

The psychosocial consequences that a child experiences as a result of growing up without a parent are assessed differently and are also highly dependent on other factors. The specific effect of fatherlessness or motherhood depends on the general psychological stability of the child and the broader environment of fixed support persons.

The personality of the raising parent also plays a central role. Fatherlessness or motherhood is seen as a problem in the development of gender identity.

Orphans in institutions (foundling homes, orphanages, nursing homes) suffer from the consequences of hospitalization and psychological deprivation.

A 2011 study in France examined the school, social, occupational and emotional status of 500,000 orphans under the age of 21. The study showed how many orphans actually suffer from trauma and socio-psychological disorders :

• years later, only 50% of them could easily talk about what happened;
• 18% could not find the words;
• 76% said the loss of one or both parents resulted in disruption to family relationships;
• 63% said it had a negative impact on their emotional life;
• 52% noted difficulties in education and career.

Orphans are less likely to make contact with their adopted brothers, withdraw, or switch to psychological defense mode.

If one parent dies, the child's risk of suicide increases significantly. This is confirmed by a study by Danish researcher May-Britt Guldin. In total, data from 7.3 million people from Denmark, Sweden and Finland were included. Children and young people who lost their parents before reaching the age of 18 were taken into account. The control group was used for comparison with children whose parents had not yet died.

Researchers have found that losing a parent during childhood increases a child's risk of committing suicide. This effect lasted up to 25 years after the death of the parent.

Another observation was that boys were twice as likely to commit suicide as girls. Those most often affected were boys whose mothers committed suicide and first-born children whose parent died before the age of six.