Perception of child adoption among parents/care-givers of children attending pediatric outpatients′ clinics in Enugu, South East, Nigeria

Abstract

Continued advocacy and public enlightenment campaigns should be strengthened in order to harmonize adoption process in our setting.

Child Adoption, Posttraumatic-Stress Disorder and the Role of a Paediatrician in the Adoption Process

“…In Nigeria, separate studies from Kano, Ibadan and Enugu indicate that foster parenting is more prevalent than child adoption 25,26,27 . A study in Enugu, south eastern Nigeria revealed that majority of the respondents prefer to adopt a child in the neonatal age group with slight preference for the male gender 28 .…”

Social Work Intervention against Illegal Child Adoption

“…This makes every family to desire a child. Despite these genuine reasons for adoption, it has been discovered that some buy children for rituals while some trade them for money, depriving them their right to life [2].…”

“…According to [10], human trafficking is a major human rights violation, which United Nations in 2000 set up the Palermo protocols, tagged "Protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children" (Palermo Protocol, 2013) [11]. The section 3(a) of this document defines child trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of threat or the use of force or other means of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.…”

“…They equally suggested measures to curb such barriers like advocacy, community mobilization and enactment of supportive laws that will protect all parties involved [12]. [10] discovered that there is emergence of middlemen who persuade prospective adoptive parents to avoid the procedural bottlenecks of adoption and adopt babies through unauthorized agents who keep pregnant girls illegally till their deliveries. The philanthropists, who discouraged young pregnant girls from aborting their babies, kept them until they deliver in a place started with genuine motive and later gave those babies for adoption.…”

“…There are still misconceptions and wrong information on child adoption in our society. Fear of confidentiality, long waiting time, corruption, and procedural bottlenecks that involve the adoption process by staff of social welfare of the state makes prospective adoptive parents to patronize unregistered adoptive agents who contract the adoption for them at very exorbitant rates without proper pre-placement medical examination and no official records (Eke et al 2014 [10]). Chukwu (2012) in his paper tagged adoption of children in Nigeria under the child's Right Act 2003 noted that social stigmatization is a major factor militating against adoption in Nigeria [1].…”