Hoofdstuk 18 - Afstand en adoptie: het perspectief van moeders in India

Abstract

In the past decades, thousands of children from India and other countries left their original families and homeland to be adopted elsewhere (Selman, 2020b). Adoption is usually a joyful and moving event for the adoptive parents, but it is preceded by a significant event: the separation of a mother and her child. This article focuses on the process before the adoption. The perspective of the mothers, their experiences, feelings, considerations, priorities, and ultimately their decision-making about whether or not to relinquish their child, is central to this article. In my research, completed in 2008, I focused on mothers in Tamil Nadu, South India. During the research, I focused on legal adoptions. Research into illegal adoptions is important from a legal perspective and in the context of human rights. However, from a cultural-anthropological perspective and for the sake of delineation, I chose to study the decision-making process of mothers in legal procedures. I sought contact with all NGOs in and around Chennai (South India) that had a permit to place children for adoption in foreign and/or Indian adoptive families during my fieldwork period in 2002 and 2003. Through these institutions, I wanted to gain access to unmarried mothers who were facing the dilemma of whether or not to relinquish their child.