Boys continue to be favourite of childless couples

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, Sep 28, 2012: Despite an aggressive campaign by the government in various forms on the importance of girl child and their skewed ratio, male babies continue to be hot favourites for childless couples to adopt.

Since the availability of male babies at the government run Sishu Gruha, cannot cater to demand for them, couples prefer to wait rather than adopting a girl baby.

There are around 100 applications from childless couples pending at the women and child welfare department and more than 70 are for male babies. The rest are pending due to various other reasons.

These applications seeking male babies below the age of one year or a newborn are pending since as early as 2008, which shows that childless couples are ready to wait for many years for a male child but not ready to adopt a female baby available at the government run rescue homes.

“The situation also throws light on the fact that very few male babies are abandoned. More parents approach us seeking male babies who are not available with us,” Child Welfare Committee (CWC), chairperson, T Ramani Spandana told this correspondent.

Until now, the CWC here cleared 43 applications since 2006 and childless couples adopted children. Here too, more than 30 children who were given for adoptions were male babies.

At present, there are around 14 children below 3 years of age at the Sishu Gruha, where abandoned children are being taken care.

Spandana, also pointed that children above 3 years of age are not finding any takers for adoption as most prospective couples prefer months old baby.

Concerns are also raised over growing unauthorized adoptions. The CWC has received at least 15 unauthorised adoption cases to their notice since the beginning of this year from various sources, including police.

The long adoption process as long as 14 months pushes many to take the unauthorized route to adopt children by spending as much as Rs 25,000.