Is knowledge of family history related to psychosocial functioning? Comparison of adolescents living in institutional care and adolescents living with their biological families

Abstract

We tested adolescents growing up in institutional care and adolescents living with their birth families using the ‘Do you know?’ scale and other measures of psychosocial functioning. We found that children living in group homes knew significantly less of their family history, exhibited more behavioural problems and had a more external locus of control. Moreover, the correlations between self-esteem and knowledge of family history were significantly different between the groups. This may suggest that the contribution of the knowledge of family history to self-esteem is different depending on the quality of family history. We also found a significant correlation between locus of control and behavioural problems for the children in institutional care, but not children living with their birth families, which may indicate that their behavioural problems may partially stem from the sense of lack of control over their lives.

Keywords:

• Knowledge of family history
• locus of control
• behavioural problems
• self-esteem
• institutional care

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all participating institutions for their help in collecting the data for the study. One of the institutions is Wrocławskie Centrum Opieki i Wychowania, others cannot be named due to anonymity reasons.