INDIA, August 2011: One of the ironies of life is that there are millions of children without homes, and without families, while there are millions of adults who wish to be parents but cannot. Adoption is the process which can unite them, and yet it is still a loaded word for many Indian families.
For years there was a stigma attached to adoption, especially in Indian society. In a country like India where so much value is placed on marriage, family values and fertility, it can be particularly difficult for a couple to be ‘barren’. In India it can be feast or famine, where children are concerned. The orphanages are full of abandoned children waiting to be adopted.
And on the other side you have thousands of couples, both in India and the Diaspora, who can’t conceive and yearn to have a child to nurture and love. So shouldn’t this be the simplest thing in the world – placing abandoned children and prospective parents together to create new loving homes and giving children a future?
Most people who have been through the adoption process talk as if they’ve been through the wringer – emotionally and financially – for adopting a child from India is like running a marathon through hoops and mazes. How can one make sense of the procedures and bring about a quick happy ending?
The US State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs statistics shows that between 1999 -2010, 224,615 children were adopted from several countries. The total amount of children from India in this time frame was 4753.
At source, there is plenty of useful information on how to adopt a child from India.