With economic liberalisation bringing a brand new independence for women in the past decade, urban women like Pethe can not only afford to run their households, but also have access to supporting lifestyle structures like home delivery and crèches. It is social independence plus economic empowerment. Rigid marriage structures are gaining flexibility at least in the metros and more and more single women are coming forward to adopt a child.

Explains Jagannath Pati, deputy director and public information officer of the Central Adoption and Resource Agency (CARA), Delhi: “These days parents don't force their daughters to marry early. They are professionally, financially and personally strong, yet they have a tender side to them to love and be loved unconditionally.”

In a patriarchal world, women are doing away with the father figure to create their own version of a family. Adoption centres across the country record a growth in the number of adoption of a girl child by single women. According to Madhuri Abhyankar, director of Pune-based SOFOSH, about 20 single women adopted a girl child in the past two years. “This is a significant increase as compared with 2003-04, when only five or six women came for adoption,” she says. Roxana Kalyanvala, director of Pune-based Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra (BSSK), too has noticed a similar trend. “In 2004, eight to ten women adopted girls from BSSK, while in 2005 it was 10-12. Each year, it is going up by 5-7 per cent and that is quite significant,” she says. A look at the past decade — 1996-2006 — shows that of the 25 single women who adopted girl children from BSSK, five are NRIs, six foreigners of Indian origin and 14 Indians.

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