Changing Stereotypes: Indians prefer girls while adopting children

It may be surprising for a few, but today people who cannot have children naturally go for a girl while adopting a child. According to Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) records, in the last three years, girl adoption rate is visibly much larger than boy adoption rate.

“1,848 boys were adopted in 2012-2013 as compared to 2,846 girls. Total adoptions in the year were 4,694. Since then, adoptions declined in 2013 but the preference for girls has persisted. In 2013-2014, prospective parents adopted 2,293 girls as compared to 1,631 boys while in 2014-2015, 2,300 girls were adopted as compared to 1,688 boys. While total domestic adoptions have come down from 4,694 to 3,924 in 2013-2014, it has increased marginally to 3,988 this year,” reports Economic Times.

It has been noted that the reason why girls are being adopted more can be because of the lesser availability of boys. A lot of young girls are orphaned when parents abandon them due to family pressures to have a boy. Additionally parents who are underproductive do not think so much over the gender of the child while adopting one.

The adopting process in India is a long and tiring one. Thousands of parents have filed a plea with CARA to adopt a child, but the process takes a whole lot of time which is the reason for a less number of adoptions per year. To rectify this, Maneka Gandhi, Women and child development minister, introduced various amendments in the process to simplify the process. She is also aiming for 15000 adoptions this year, which according to the current rate is hard to achieve.

Another reason cited by the experts for the increasing girl adoption is that a trend has begun where a lot of single women are adopting a child to complete their family. These women highly go for a girl child.

In a country like India where centuries have gone by in setting right the error done by our forefathers when they said that girls are beneath the level of men, this seems like an achievement for us as a country. With the awareness spread not just in tier 1 and tier 2 cities, but also at the grassroots levels we are coming at a sort of equal paradigm where equal opportunities to both men and women are being rendered. Kudos to such an India!

Picture Credit- Daya Trust