Whose Children?

Children, Families, Adoption

Once Smt, a student whom I was teaching at home, asked me how anyone could adopt, how that can be a real relationship. I had not thought about it explicitly until then but the answer was obvious - I told her, after all you adopt your various in-laws, and your husband too when you marry; what is it except adoption by another name, after all? 

She was quite surprised - as it often happens when reality or truth hits you, tearing veils from your sight. 

Any relationships that cannot be broken or lost are either of blood - or of heart (by which I don't mean of desire or anything else that passes by that name, but really of heart) or mind or something even deeper, the inner being, your own light hidden deep within, the soul. This light is the one that gives the sudden recognition between two people which may or may not be clear at a superficial level of your being, but unless you have had it you might mistake a lesser one for this. As one often mistakes a pale imitation for the reality or a mutual self-interest for friendship. 

Most of social relationships other than these can be lost or broken - but the ones that cannot be broken or lost are of real content of heart or mind or soul - or blood. Which is why a relationship formed by marriage is of a formal, fragile nature, especially the relationship between two people who are related to each other by a marriage not their own to each other - until that changes into a relationship of blood, through a new arrival. Then it is no longer a relationship that can break and the people are tied forever, even beyond deaths of their own persons. 

This is not to say of course that no other relationship is true - it is of course even more indestructible a relationship when it is of heart or mind or soul. But most relationships are of one of two sorts - either they are social or or they are of blood. Neighbours, classmates, colleagues, ... they all seem important when they are in the same box of one sort or another. Then, it is a question of if they really of heart and mind and soul, or not.

....................................x...................................... 

Adoption is a far more prevalent custom in the west than in east, for various reasons. Here it is resorted to for reasons other than a need to bring up children and call them one's own - sometimes it is a need for inheritance to be passed on and sometimes a need of a religious sort, of a heir that would not only look after you in old days but also take care of your funeral and last rites and anniversaries thereafter. Usually it used to be a religious ceremony of adoption and usually it was a boy that got adopted and often it was a relative's son, sometimes a boy from a poor family of the same community. During the British times adoption was sort of endangered - the colonial rulers had a finger in every pie and often declared they disapproved of the adoption that had taken place, and did not recognise the adopted heir as such - which all amounted to one thing and one only, they took the inheritance that was intended for the adopted heir. 

If there was any other reason for looking after a child it was never considered necessary to adopt in order to love or care or guide. Children were for all society to give all this and an official adoption was not necessary and relevant. In fact even when parents of a child were well and alive and capable of providing guidance, relatives and neighbours had rights and privileges to share in that bringing up by definition. As for love, who can control it or channelise it? It was not much talked about at any rate. Orphans did get looked after and in more than one way too, but again, that did not need an adoption. 

If all this is too realistic - well, India is realistic. (So is perhaps all east?.)

....................................x...................................... 

It is not that we don't appreciate the kindness and so forth institutional in the formal adoptions in the western society. It is that when it comes to rights of parents and questions of who the child belongs to and resorting to law, courts, others making decisions, and so on - it brings us to the question of a very basic nature of relationship. 

In west it is not considered obligatory for a grown up child to look after the parents, and parents are free of obligation of most sorts towards children as soon as the children mature to legal age, after which it is a question of mutual will and so on. How often in U.S. has one heard jokes about mothers calling and children avoiding and so on! 

So then, considering it is a relationship that is going to be short anyway - why do people fight over the various aspects of rights of adoptive versus blood relationships? Why not have a system by which it might be possible to share and visit and so on? 

This happens because everyone forgets - that a dispute over other things and that over children is not the same, that it is not a question of whose rights, that a child is not to be owned but only loved and raised and guided into being a responsible adult. Tales of the two mothers fighting over the baby are forgotten and since it is a question of which adult has rights sometimes the children lose what they could have gained.

....................................x......................................

The other end of the thread of the story of adoption - happens all the time in west and tears at the hearts even while reading about it - is when an adopted child grows up and looks for one's own parents for various reasons, mostly of finding out who one is. Often it is a quest that begins with having one's own children and sometimes ends well in actually finding and meeting and seeing the face of one's own children in those of various relatives and feeling connected. This feeling of connection, everyone deserves. Death does not take it away - but a pretense and a legal obstruction to finding birth parents can. 

After all there are always going to be other people in lives of children - peers, teachers, more. If birth parents and other relatives could accommodate themselves as part of lives of those they cannot bring up - and adoptive parents allow this - it would be better for children. Wouldn't it?

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………………………………………………..