CONTRIBUTION OF FOSTER PARENTS' SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC AND PSYCHOSOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS IN EXPLAINING MOTIVES FOR PROVIDING FOSTER CARE TO CHILDREN

Current knowledge about the foster parents' motives for providing foster care refers to motivational processes which include a range of psychosocial processes responsible for the intensity, direction and persistence of foster parents' efforts to provide foster care, achieve a certain goal and keep their foster parents' role. Since in Croatia there has not been any research focusing on foster parents' motives, the aims of the article are: (1) to verify psychometric characteristics of the scale for examining foster parents' motives for foster parenting and (2) to determine the correlation between socio-demographic and psychosocial characteristics of foster parents with foster parenting motives. The research was conducted among 279 foster mothers in Croatia. The results suggest that the most prominent motivating factors are altruism and filling a gap in a person's life. Somewhat less prominent motives are based on their own experience of childhood and foster care, a desire for a child or expanding the family as well as religious and patriotic motives. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis reveal that based on socio-demographic and psychosocial characteristics of foster parents it is possible to predict their contribution in explaining foster parents' motives for foster care. The results also suggest some guidelines for elaborating possible modalities of potential foster parents' recruitment.