Bringing baby home

"The decision to adopt is seen as some sort of an admission of inadequacy in a society that sees a woman as a person whose basic function is to breed. Indeed, it took me many years of trying to have my own baby, IVF included, before I even accepted the idea of adopting one. But now I don’t want any other".

By Aradhika Sekhon

OF course, there are thousands of children whom parents don’t want. So the child is abandoned, left at the doors of an orphanage or at the steps of a temple or just about anywhere. There are many reasons too, why a mother would want to abandon her child, the primary one being that she’s simply too poor to bring it up. It may be also that she’s an unwed mother or that the child is another girl in a long line of female children.

Sometimes these children, through police intervention or through social organisations, find their way to an orphanage/adoption centre. Surprisingly, Indian orphanages, by and large, have come a long way and provide sound institutionalised care in terms of health-care, education and nutrition. The authorities have started looking at why the children have been put into care, who has put them there and how they may eventually be taken out of care and go to families who want them. Children, specially babies up to the age of one year, get adopted reasonably fast but the problem begins when they start growing up because the older they get, the more limited are their chances of going out of the orphanage.

Sudha Sharma explains her reasons for preferring to adopt a six-week-old girl, "I wanted a little baby because I wanted to get a complete feeling of motherhood — to experience my child right from the beginning". Another reason, stated by G.S. Sandhu, who adopted a four-month-old boy three years ago, is, "We wanted the child to grow into the ethos of the family naturally. We didn’t want to have our child unlearn whatever he has acquired before getting to learn our ways".

Ironically, there is no national law in the country for the children and their adopted parents. Rather, the laws, which are over a century old ,are divided on communal lines with one law for Hindus (The Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act of 1956) and another for non-Hindus (The Guardian and Wards Act of 1890). While the former is irrevocable and confers on the adopted child the rights of a natural born child, the parents of the children adopted under the latter are merely appointed guardians. Once they grow up, these children face a lurking danger that they may be abandoned again, especially if the parents subsequently have a child of their own. Says G.S. Sandhu: "According to the law, if you have a child of your own and adopt another one of the same sex, the adoption can be revoked when the child is 18. Then it would be for the child to decide whether he wants to remain with the parents or not. Or he can also be taken back by his biological parents".

The authorities at PALNA (a leading placement agency under the Delhi Council of Child Welfare) agree that the absence of a uniform adoption law and the anomalies of the existing one have been a drawback in adoption. According to the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, a couple can adopt only one child of each sex and the child must be of Hindu origin. "Now if a child is left outside our door in the middle of the night, how do we determine his or her religion?", they say. Moreover, adoption is done in the name of the father with the mother being merely a co-petitioner. But for this anomaly, more and more girls would be adopted. Says Sandhu, "It is because of this distortion of the law that a lot of couples wanting to adopt do not do so. Out of the 50,000 children abandoned each year, only 3000 of them are adopted ...... instead of institutionalising the child, isn’t it better to make some amendments in the law and find homes for them?"

Generally, the attitude of the society, though now leaning towards a change, is still ambiguous towards an adopted child. Ashish Wadhera, owner of a departmental store in Delhi, could not get his child admitted to one of the leading schools in Delhi. "The Principal rejected the application outright ..... my daughter is as intelligent as another kid ... Why should schools have this column at all whether the child is adopted or not?".

On a familial level, it’s the parents and relatives of the adopting couple who cannot accept the presence of an "alien" child in their family. Says Wadhera, "Earlier, my family wasn’t ready to accept my daughter but now when they’ve seen her grow, even my brother wants to adopt a baby".

Says Sudha Sharma, "The decision to adopt is seen as some sort of an admission of inadequacy in a society that sees a woman as a person whose basic function is to breed. Indeed, it took me many years of trying to have my own baby, IVF included, before I even accepted the idea of adopting one. But now I don’t want any other".

A preoccupation with the parents vis-a-vis an adopted child, especially a small child, is whether or not to tell him of his adopted status and when to do so. Says Dr Harpreet Kanwal, clinical psychologist and counsellor. ‘’Under no circumstances must the parents assume that the child will never find out". Even if the revelation comes when the child has grown up, it will still be a great shock. "The cognitive equation of the child with his environment gets disturbed when he discovers the superficiality of an anchor symbol of a parent set".

Also, the person who tells him has to bear the direct impact of the child’s resentment — that he/she could have told but had chosen to withhold this very important fact of his own life from him. A child, who is already deficient in survival skills, specially has a sense of having been greatly cheated.

"There are no set rules or ways to tell the child that he’s not a natural born offspring," says Dr Kanwal. "One way is to simple let him grow with the knowledge. Another is to let him grow to a state where he is mature enough to handle the knowledge and support the transition with understanding and patience". For this, the existing relationship or association with the parents would have to be a strong and binding one. There have been cases like the one of a doctor-daughter who, upon getting to know about her status, broke all contacts with her adoptive and natural parents (she was another sister’s daughter), a not uncommon phenomenon, which is explained by Dr Kanwal as "upsetting the balance of the super ego — a blow to self-esteem, which can cause trauma in a person."

The authorities at almost every placement agency, be it under the DCCW or the Haryana State Council for Child Welfare or NGOs like the Red Cross, which sometimes are directly or indirectly involved in adoption, agree that adoption undoubtedly offers an important avenue for the care and protection of an abandoned, destitute or neglected child in a family setting and provides an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding for the realisation of the child’s talents and potential. While most adopting parents are aware of this, there are certain inbuilt prejudices among Indians adopting parents while looking for a child to take home. "Most Indians want to have a fair and a good-looking child and some are very particular about boys. Also, no Indian would want to adopt a handicapped child," says the Honourary General Secretary, Haryana State Council for Child Welfare.

Foreigners, on the other hand, have no such problems. But the laws that govern the adoption agencies, overseen by CARA (Central Adoption Resource Agencies under the aegis of the Ministry of Welfare), require that only 50 per cent of the children adopted per year may be sent abroad for adoption. Gunjan Sharma, a social worker, says: "There are people who make a huge noise when foreigners adopt Indian children," citing the example of 10-year-old Lata, who came from a family with an abusive and alcoholic father. She says, "Do you think a girl of Lata’s age and circumstances would be adopted by an Indian couple? Never! It’s an American couple with three children who have adopted her. Also, children with a deformity or health problem definitely have a better chance of finding a home abroad."

The reason for limiting adoptions abroad by the government as stated in the "Revised Guidelines for Adoption" is: "It is an accepted fact that the child develops best in his or her own cultural and social milieu. Thus, the placement of a child through adoption in an indigenous setting would be ideal for his/her growth and development. Inter-country adoption should be resorted to only if all efforts to place the child with adoptive parents residing in India prove unsuccessful".

The adopting parent set is also allowed to look at the children in the adoption home, interact and talk with them and choose their child. For adoptive parents abroad, the process takes five to eight months because the legalities and processes are much longer with the embassies of both countries being involved as well as registered adoptive agencies. Even so, many children are being adopted by foreigners who find adoption in India much easier than in their own countries. Says Elna Zangari, an Italian lady who had come all the way to India in 1994 to adopt a baby girl from one of the placement agencies working under the DCCW, "The laws here are more liberal and the process is so much easier and the people are so polite. It took me just a few months to adopt a three-year-old baby girl. In Italy, the process takes two to three years due to red-tapeism." Elna came back after two years for a second child.

In India, however, a great many adoptions are done unofficially — many times inter-family adoptions take place. Mrs Khurana (not her real name) simply collected a newborn baby from her over-burdened sister and then filled out the birth papers recording herself as the natural mother — not legal, but it did turn two unhappy families into happy ones! Also, many times at nursing homes and private hospitals, abandoned or unwanted babies are taken in by childless couples or mothers who have lost their baby at child-birth. The law frowns upon these unofficial methods and states: "In all matters concerning adoption, the welfare of the child shall be paramount. Therefore, private adoptions of abandoned, destitute and surrendered children conducted by unauthorised individuals, agencies or institutions should be discouraged".

When the responsibility for providing care and protection to children can no longer be handled by its family and when children are orphaned, abandoned, neglected and abused, the responsibility shifts to the community, society and the state to provide both institutional and non-institutional support to them. Adoption under such circumstances is the best non-institutional support for the rehabilitation of children, and the most reliable means of preventing situations associated with abuse, exploitation and social maladjustment of children who have been brought into the world and then left to cope on their own.