Abstract

The aim of this project is to give a first contribution to a multi-method assessment of couples of "future parents" at the beginning of their adoptive path, when they have to obtain the certificate of fitness to be an adoptive parent (as requested by the Italian low) and to verify how this assessment will result in the adoptive process when the child enters the family. We choose to focus on the early assessment of these "future" parents for at least two main reasons: the early assessment has been scarcely analyzed in the existing literature; more attention was given in assessing parents and children after adoption. Moreover, there is a critical gap at many levels: to be a adapted and successful parent is either always connected with the adequacy to be a good-enough parent, or to the "fitness" to adopt a problematic child. This gap is probably one of the most important evidence for the high number of failures in adoption. We used a "multi-method" approach to assess 40 couples at the beginning of their adoptive path. Results highlight the utility of this kind of approach in the future adoptive parents assessment.