Silent Violence and Adoption: the paradigm of Children's Rights in Brazil

This research aimed to identify and investigate processes of silent violence in the context of adoption and its impact on child protection in Brazil. The study consisted of exploratory research from a literature review on the history of childhood and adoption in Brazil, the legal path of child protection and the violence issue in the context and an analysis of concepts and implications through a psychoanalytic perspective. Then, through in-depth interviews with relevant groups (suiters for adoption, adopters professionals, and adoptees), the study investigated the silent violence phenomena in the context of adoption, identifying key issues and variables that were further analyzed and discussed considering the content explored in the literature review. Therefore, the paradigm in Children's rights in Brazil can be described as a problematic reality with deep social-historical roots based on four main phenomena: minorism, biologism, the conceptual problem of adoption, and lack of professional qualification in the specific field. Through these critical phenomena, adoption walks a dangerous path regarding putting the child's best interest in the spotlight. Hiding acts of violence through a set of new laws that can still show minorist characteristics, especially in a conceptual view, is a fake sensation that we are protecting the youth when we are just in a fight against the undeniable biologism that permeates society.