My thoughts for this Saturday

Reason to adopt

On the 9th of May, I was traveling from Bangalore so I bought “Times of India” newspaper to read. One article caught my attention where Minister of state for women and child development of India Ms. Renuka Chowdary who is also in-charge of adoptions in India said that

1. Lot of NRI’s are coming forward to adopt children from India because they are guilty to have left India and
2. Foreigners are coming forward to adopt children from India because they like the higher intellectual abilities and good looks of Indian children.

Though respectfully, I couldn’t disagree more with the Minister on these two statements. Even to this day, reason for my migration to the US is crystal clear to me and I don’t see the need to justify my actions to anyone. We had adopted our little girls while living in the United States for 14 years. Simple reason why we wanted to adopt was to be parents. I have known quite a few NRI adoptive parents whose desire to adopt also was not based on guilt but either to be parents or to share their life and love.

Such statements also bring one’s own inefficiencies to the fore. Shouldn’t an entity (in this case India) be reluctant to place a child in a family whose motives are based on blatant disingenuous reasons such as guilt?

A few years ago, my family had attended an India adoption camp of a certain adoption agency in the US. All the children that come there are adoptive children from India. An image of a child that was adopted from India with severe physical limitations is still vivid in my memory. She was about 10 years in age, seated in a motorized wheel chair, couldn’t speak clearly, unable to focus her eyes and had to be helped for every little task such as using a toilet. Her mother who is a Caucasian drove her for more than 10 hours to bring her to the camp went everywhere with her to guide her wheel chair and to help. In the evening, when all the kids entered the swimming pool, her mother carried her and brought her to the pool with floats so that she wouldn’t miss out on the fun that other children were having.

It is grossly unfair to parent’s like that Caucasian mother to say that their desire to adopt was higher intellectual abilities and good looks of a child. Her love was not saintly but motherly because she simply wanted to be a mother.

What do you think? Leave me a comment.