Event Title

The supply-side of adoption. Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of unmarried mothers in South India.

Presenter Information

Pien Bos
Fenneke Reysoo

Start Date

7-4-2010 4:00 PM

End Date

7-4-2010 5:30 PM

Description

Each year, thousands of children flow from their countries of origin to be welcomed by adoptive parents elsewhere. Upstream of this usually happy event, an irrevocable decision has been made on the supply side of adoption. Research from the perspective of the biological mothers in southern countries is nonexistent. Giving them a voice has been the main focus of our recent anthropological investigation. We propose to contribute to the symposium with a reflection on the supply side of adoption by presenting the decision-making processes of pregnant women and mothers in India who were considering to relinquish a child for adoption. Adoptees born in India were said to be mainly surrendered by unmarried mothers, since unmarried mothers are a culturally stigmatized group. Social workers in India as well as professionals in the field of adoption in western countries have internalized this culturally constructed determinant of exclusion and think, act and counsel accordingly. Through the experiences of the unmarried mothers themselves new insights have been generated to understand the decision-making processes with regard to raising their children or surrendering them for adoption.

Main findings

Relinquished?

Mothers regarded motherhood as not transferable: ‘Your own child is your blood. But if you buy a child, you are buying only the body, not the soul’. They experienced their decision to relinquish basically as the surrender of the care for their child but not of the child itself.

Compelling Forces

Mothers in India have also been influenced and were in some cases completely overruled by ‘others’. Mothers who were expected to relinquish their child by relatives or social workers were sometimes extensively excluded from the decision-making process and merely complied to other people’s decisions.

Comments

About the authors
Pien Bos obtained a MA degree in Pedagogic Sciences - with a specialization in adoption – (1993) and a MA degree in Cultural Anthropology - with a specialization in women, gender and development – (1996) at the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands). Between 1995 and 2000 she worked as a co-ordinator for the Vereniging Wereldkinderen (Association Worldchildren), an NGO for child-welfare and inter-country adoption in The Hague. In 2000 she joined the Stichting Adoptievoorzieningen (Foundation for Adoption Services) where she co-ordinated the Roots Information Centre, a centre for adoptees with a desire for information about their background and/or biological family. She taught compulsory educational courses for prospective adoptive parents. In 2001 she became a PhD researcher at the Department of Social Science Research Methodology at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She received her PhD degree with the highest distinction in January 2008. In 2009 she started a Post-Doc research project on decision-making processes of mothers/parents with regard to relinquishment or acceptance of a child in the Netherlands.

Dr Reysoo, anthropologist, has a long-standing international academic career (The Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Morocco, Mexico, South Africa). She was appointed in 2000 as the first Senior Lecturer on Gender and Development issues at the former Institute of Development Studies (IUED, Geneva), where she created "Le Pôle Genre et Développement". Between 2005 and 2007 she was the Vice Director of the Master Programme at the IUED. Her research evolved on the issues of reproductive and sexual health and rights (Morocco, Bangladesh, Mexico, Mali, Burkina Faso). She has coordinated and executed many collective and individual research projects financed by international funds (UNFPA, OPS, Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (Haarlem), Dutch Science Foundation (NWO & WOTRO), Dutch Development Co-operation (DGIS), European Commission (DG XII), Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN), Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DCO).

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Apr 7th, 4:00 PM Apr 7th, 5:30 PM

The supply-side of adoption. Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of unmarried mothers in South India.

Each year, thousands of children flow from their countries of origin to be welcomed by adoptive parents elsewhere. Upstream of this usually happy event, an irrevocable decision has been made on the supply side of adoption. Research from the perspective of the biological mothers in southern countries is nonexistent. Giving them a voice has been the main focus of our recent anthropological investigation. We propose to contribute to the symposium with a reflection on the supply side of adoption by presenting the decision-making processes of pregnant women and mothers in India who were considering to relinquish a child for adoption. Adoptees born in India were said to be mainly surrendered by unmarried mothers, since unmarried mothers are a culturally stigmatized group. Social workers in India as well as professionals in the field of adoption in western countries have internalized this culturally constructed determinant of exclusion and think, act and counsel accordingly. Through the experiences of the unmarried mothers themselves new insights have been generated to understand the decision-making processes with regard to raising their children or surrendering them for adoption.

Main findings

Relinquished?

Mothers regarded motherhood as not transferable: ‘Your own child is your blood. But if you buy a child, you are buying only the body, not the soul’. They experienced their decision to relinquish basically as the surrender of the care for their child but not of the child itself.

Compelling Forces

Mothers in India have also been influenced and were in some cases completely overruled by ‘others’. Mothers who were expected to relinquish their child by relatives or social workers were sometimes extensively excluded from the decision-making process and merely complied to other people’s decisions.