The Hindu : Kerala News : Nature vs. nurture

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 10, 2005

Kerala

Kerala

Nature vs. nurture

Thiruvananthapuram: The nature vs. nurture debate and the emotional problems it poses is one of the toughest situations that most adoptive parents have to face. There are adoptive parents who spend a best part of their parenthood wondering and worrying about their child's genetic make-up which, they feel, would ultimately decide their child's personality development, behavioural traits and, most importantly, his/her performance in studies.

Joy of parenting

There are also parents like Jayasree Nair for whom the sheer joy of parenting overrides all such concerns. Dr. Jayasree, a lecturer at the University College here and her husband, an official at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), adopted their daughter after 14 years of marriage, after they had exhausted all available medical treatment options. Her 10-year-old daughter, says Dr. Jayasree, may not be an exceptional student, but she is an exceptional daughter. "It was she who lighted up our lives and not the other way round. She has made us feel so complete. We just want to concentrate on helping her become a good individual and secure her life," she says. Whenever parents air the nature/nurture questions at the meetings of Kerala Adoptive Parents Organisation (KAFO), counsellors tell them that what matters more than nature's contribution is the environment and values that they as parents provide to the children.

Love and security

Any child who is brought up in an affection-filled and emotionally secure environment will blossom naturally. Instead of attributing the child's negative traits to nature, parents should give the child good educational and social exposure, counsellors point out.

The absence of a uniform law of adoption, problems of guardianship and the denial of normal benefits like maternity leave that are naturally accorded to biological mothers are other issues common to all adoptive parents which KAFO has been trying to bring to public fora.

Apart from its annual meetings, many member-families of KAFO have formed their own networks and are holding monthly get-together programmes to discuss problems of emotional and social integration that they face.

S. Haridas, president of KAFO, who is a Government servant and his wife, Jayasree, a bank employee, feel that it is up to the parents themselves to ensure that the child is provided an environment wherein the attention is more on the child rather than his/her adoptive status. "We are bringing up our 7-year-old daughter just like any normal child. Unlike in the initial year, our relatives and friends do not treat us with kid-gloves just because our daughter is adopted," Haridas says.

Tell them the truth

He points out that there is no point in keeping the child's adoptive status a secret and then become touchy about the veiled remarks of friends and relatives. "Two of my colleagues who were supposed to be close to me, stopped talking to me after we adopted our daughter. I was hurt initially, but now I realize that the joy our child has given us is too precious to be marred by such incidents," says Ms. Jayasree.

"Ma, Did I come from your stomach too?" is a question that mothers would have to answer at some point of time. Though some parents might have misgivings about revealing the truth to the child, counsellors tell them to be honest with their child and that he/she will respect them for the truth. "I told my child about Lord Krishna's story when she was five and that I was her foster mother just like Yashoda was Krishna's. She knows that she was not born to me, but that I am her mother," Dr. Jayasree Nair says.

By C. Maya

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