KNOWLEDGE, ACCEPTANCE AND PRACTICE OF CHILD ADOPTION AMONG THE PEOPLE OF ORLU NORTH EAST, IMO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Childlessness sometimes become an issue in marriages and provides a strong motive for child adoption. Child adoption has dual role of giving joy having children to the adoptive family as well as providing abandoned, parentless, impoverished, homeless children with the affection and emotional security needed to develop and mature into a resourceful adult. That is lifelong security to the child and the adoptive family. Nevertheless, adoption is not beyond controversy as the adoptive parents face the challenges of full social recognition of their adopted child, while the adopted child is entrapped with issues of social acceptance and adjusting to care plans of his/ her new family. In fact adoption triad is beset with issues of loss, rejection, stigmatization, conflicts etc. This study was conducted in four communities in Orlu North East of Imo state namely, Akokwa, Akpulu, Dikenafai and Umuma-Isiaku to investigate the people’s perception and attitude towards adoption of children. One thousand two hundred (1200) questionnaires were administered to 600 unmarried males and females, 600 married males and females drawn from these communities selected through multistage sampling. Sixteen focus group discussions and fourteen in-depth interviews with 142 study participants comprising the communities’ traditional rulers, opinion leaders, social welfare officers, adoptive parents and members of the community development associations were conducted and used to generate the qualitative data for the study. The results of the study show high percentage (98.90%) of people’s knowledge of the concept of child adoption and remarkable acceptance of child adoption and the adopted child as a great asset for family provisions, stability and continuity (64.42%). Findings also show that child adoption was practised in this area in an informal manner and it was characterised by high level of secrecy, anonymity and sealed records. Majority of the respondents (43.2%) maintained that the main reason for child adoption was to solve the problem of childlessness. It was mainly childless couples that adopted children according to (45.2% of the respondents, followed by couples with one sex children (girls 17.9%) then couples with one sex children (boys 17.7%). The type of adoption that was mostly practised in this area was closed adoption. There is a social stigma often attached to adoption was however high. The study recommended implementation of relevant laws on adoption, as well as public enlightenment on child adoption by social workers and the media.