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Adoption in India: Policies and Experiences
The book opens with the introduction of adoption practices. It discusses both traditional and contemporary adoption practices, with particular focus on inter-country adoption. The author argues that India witnessed a five-fold increase in in-country adoption during 1998-2003. It marks socio-cultural, ethnic variations in adoption practices within the country. Northern states such as Punjab, Haryana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh show very low institutional adoption figures. Among the total adoptions (in-country and inter-country) in the northern region over the period 1994-98, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan together had less than 2 per cent of adoptions. While western and southern states have an effective institutional network for adoption, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Northeastern region are completely off the track. A chapter discusses theoretical paradigms and research findings concerning adoption mainly obtained from the fields of sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists to understand the process and adjustment pattern in adopted children and their families. Some of them do bring about the unconscious conflicts of adoptive parents and their children based on biological, attachment, kinship and pressure relationships. The chapters 3 and 4 discuss adoption in India in the socio-cultural and political context. They form interesting reading and mention useful procedures, legal aspects, and attitudes towards adoption. The next two chapters highlight micro considerations, based on the interviews of parents and adoptive children. Chapter 5 lists some of the dilemmas associated before adoption such as whether to adopt one child or more, whether to have adopted child with biological child. It shows the importance of environmental influence to genetic factors. Micro level studies cited in the chapter show that girls are preferred for inter-country adoption while boys are preferred for intra-country adoption. Younger and healthy children, usually less than 18 months, are preferred for adoption. There is a tremendous pressure of extended family members such as mother-in-law that a sibling’s child should be adopted despite the couple’s demand for adopting a child from anyone except relatives and friends, to negate future claims. The chapters 6, 7 and 8 make for appealing reading since they give a narrative verbatim account of interviewed children and their parents, discussing the plethora of questions and issues, fears and anxieties related to adopted children during different evolutionary stages. It was desirable from the author that she should have also discussed the parental and children grudges before and after adoption, highlighting failures or dissatisfaction arising out of adoption. Scoring techniques used for arriving at different conclusions often suffer from biased responses. On the whole, the book makes for an interesting reading. It can be helpful for researchers and those couples who have already adopted or are likely to adopt a child in near future. |
BASED on the doctoral work of the author, the book
discusses the macro concerns of child development in the light of
adoption policies and describes the micro issues concerning adoption,
listing experiences of parents and children.