Adoption days, weeks and months!

A post after a long time...life has been crazy. Had no time to think before this week.

Lately, it has been adoption tasks/thinking for a few weeks. Started with the SuDatta Annual General Meeting where a second generation adoptive parents' team has taken the helm as office bearers. The group is an association of adoptive parents - basically a support group for ourselves and others in the same/prospective boat.

The thing with involving oneself with the cause of adoption is that it is constantly in the subconscious. It is not like you can't think of anything else....but scratch the surface with one news story remotely related to it and there you go, the adoption gene comes to the fore!

So many questions and suggestions - do we tell (please, god, let us have put that question to rest....of course, YOU there, tell...now!), when, how, how much - just one part that is related to the child. Do we tell the school, how do we deal with relatives and their good/ill intentions? How much telling impinges on the child's privacy? What when your kid uses it as a card to differentiate....and gets hurt? Kids can be cruel and hard hitting....to other kids AND adults! :-)

What about the bigger context? Should the gender of the kid be dictated to you? Should it matter what religion you are - yes, in modern secular India, a personal choice like adoption is legally impacted by religion of the adoptive parents! Should the agency show you more than one child? Should you be able to specify caste, colour and religion as 'conditions' when registering preferences in the course of adoption?

The questions and choices are so many. Until you attempt to put them down on paper, you probably don't even realize that you made these choices, for good or bad. I do clearly remember the guilt I felt for not bringing home a differently abled child....no confidence in my parenting skills/patience levels and inability to provide enough opportunities. And remember the joy of feeling that my family was complete when my second one came home.

So some days are adoption days - when all of a sudden, after days of being a crazy busy regular person, you are put into situations/see/read things that directly impact your adoption gene and wake you to comment/act with passion for or against the issue.

Baby Manjee - a baby brought into the world through surrogacy, Japanese biological parents who got a divorce before the baby was born, being cared for by her paternal grandmother in a nursing home in Jaipur, visa clock ticking away.....this is the plot of a Danielle Steele story. All extreme happiness and deep devastation! Can't even attempt to list out the various factors to look at in this case.....thank god, I am not the judge or lawyers fighting this case!

In the end, adoption is not social service. It is not a 'noble' thing to do - just another way to build your family. Adoption - the other option! If anything, it is parenting that is social service!