To keep or to relinquish the baby?
When Sundari’s mother finds out about the pregnancy, she is extremely upset and physically mistreats her daughter, but she does not break off the arranged marriage with the husband she had previously chosen for her daughter. Since it is already too late for a legal abortion, Sundari's mother decides to take her pregnant daughter to a shelter for unwed mothers where Sundari will be able to give birth and give her child up for adoption.
Sundari agrees to go to the shelter, but still considers whether it might somehow be possible for her to keep the baby. She expects to be expelled by her cheated husband-to-be, and wants to reclaim her baby when this happens. Her major concern for this latter scenario is time. Formally, she has two months to reclaim her baby, but she thinks she may need up to six months to reconsider. Her hope is that the baby will stay in the institution for long enough for her to get settled at her mother's place or in the household of her husband-to-be.
Giving birth – and then what?
Sundari has a quick, natural delivery. Her baby girl is tiny, weighs barely two kilos and has slightly yellowish skin.[FN2 Scroll to the bottom of this section to read a conversation between Andrea Abraham, Nadine Gautschi, Sarah Ineichen and Rita Kesselring on adoption and its health implications.] Sundari is worried. Two weeks after the baby is born, Sundari's mother pays her a visit. Sundari's mother has decided come clean about Sundari's past and has informed the prospective groom's family about her withdrawal from the alliance. Nevertheless, Sundari's mother is still pre-occupied with her daughter’s future and plans to marry her off to another man. The child is not part of her plan.
Nobody at the shelter supports Sundari's initial plan to eventually reclaim her child. Following the delivery, she is also too tired to resist the authority figures and decides that it will be easier for her to reclaim her place within the family and build a future if she gives up the child.
Three months after giving birth, Sundari packs her bag to leave the shelter. The formalities have been completed; the surrender deed signed.
Shortly after Sundari's parting with her baby and release from the shelter, her baby became seriously ill. A few days after she stopped breastfeeding, the baby developed diarrhoea and was admitted to hospital. The disease turned out to be septicaemia, a life-threatening condition. The researcher Pien Bos knows that the baby didn't survive. She does not know whether Sundari ever learned of her child's death.
Sundari signs the deed of surrender. Photo: Pien Bos, Chennai 2003.
Keeping the baby with support from the family
Whether an unwed mother like Sundari who wanted to keep her child was able to do so depended in part on the support of her family. The mother's family had to be willing and able to help her raise the child. Pritha Somnath*[FN1 All names marked with an asterisk have been changed], who Andrea Abraham and Asha Narayan Iyer interviewed in Mumbai in 2023, has worked as a social worker in India since the 1990s. Pritha remembers women who, unlike Sundari and most other single mothers, could count on the support of their families. These mothers were able to stay with their babies even though they weren't married.
Sometimes they keep their child and decide to do so because [...] there is someone in their family who supports them. It is very difficult for a woman to live alone. So if you don't have a network... but I've had families where the fathers [of the women] said: 'No, no, that's paap, that's a sin, to just give your child away like that. You take care of your own offspring, you don't just give them away.' So there are people who are like that. […]”
You take care of your own offspring, you don't just give them away.' So there are people who are like that. […]”
It is clear from Pritha Somnath's statement that the young women did not have the autonomy to take their own decisions and that the decision lay with their parents. If a young woman wanted to keep her child, she needed her parents on her side.
Sundari holds her baby in her arms shortly before signing the surrender document. Photo: Pien Bos, Chennai 2003.
Foto von Andrea Abraham, April 2023
Keeping the baby by getting married
Families often hoped that unwed motherhood would only be temporary and that the child's father would decide to marry the mother, as Pritha Somnath remembers:
"And there is also the hope that they will want to reunite with the man whose child it is. So there is a certain hope if the couple get back together, if the man said 'yes, I accept you'. So that the child is not abandoned and you can see how the family can become a whole again."
The probability of keeping the child therefore increased through marriage. This could happen if the biological father was persuaded by the family or an adoption agency to recognise and take responsibility for the child.[FN3 Dabir, Neela (1994), A Study of a Shelter Home for Women in Distress, Mumbai, SNDT Women's University, p. 163. https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in:8443/jspui/handle/10603/161291] Kinjal Sethi,*[FN4 Andrea Abraham and Asha Narayan Iyer interviewed Kinjal Sethi during her research visit to India in April 2023.] who ran an agency from the 1970s onwards and described herself as a pioneer with regard to such arrangements:
"We are one of the few institutions that have actually managed to marry the biological mother and father. Not necessarily always the happiest marriage, but at least they came together to recognise the child and all that."
These statements show that a fulfilling relationship was not the primary aim of such an arrangement. The reasoning was more pragmatic. It was hoped that marriage would avoid the stigma the woman would otherwise face and abandonment of the child, and that it would provide a home that they could live in together. However, these arrangements to transform the parents' relationship into a marriage with the help of institutions only worked if both people (and especially their families) agreed, the man was not yet married, their religions and castes were considered compatible and the man was thought reliable enough to provide a steady income to support the family.
Sometimes biological parents had to come up with creative workarounds to keep their baby. Former agency employee Shilpi Alagh* told Andrea Abraham and Asha Narayan Iyer about a couple who adopted their own child. The couple had an affair and the woman became pregnant, giving birth to her child in secret. The child stayed at the institution until the parents were able to marry and adopt their own child. To the outside world, they were seen as a couple who could not have biological children so chose to adopt. In fact, they were a family related by blood.
Arrangements that ended in tragedy
In this example, a marriage resulted from the shared desire of the mother and father to become a family, but sometimes such arrangements could backfire and cause great suffering. Especially if the pregnancy was the result of a violent act, bringing the mother and father together could perpetuate or exacerbate the violence. Pritha Somnath describes one such marriage that she arranged as an inexperienced social worker and now regrets:
"I remember a Muslim woman who was homeless and living in a corridor of a building. She had been sexually abused by several people. Eventually, a man got her pregnant. She came to me when she was seven or eight months pregnant. I remember that I had very little time to find this man. […] And I got this man to marry her. That was stupid of me. I should have just found her a job. [...]. But I was too young to understand that at the time. […] They did actually get married. She was a person with a low IQ. […] I found her a place in a shelter so that she could give birth to the child. Then she left with the child because she was married to this man. I thought I had saved them. She was young: 17, 18, 19 years old [...]. And in the end, this man took the child on a long-distance train journey and killed it. That was what I thought when she came with the dead child. He probably suffocated the child and then handed it over to her. After that, he disappeared from her life. She never came back to me either. I couldn't find her at her usual spot. […] I think that's my biggest failure. I should have simply placed her in a good institution to give birth. If she hadn't been with this man, everything would have been very different, and she would have been relieved to give her child up for adoption."
Keeping the pregnancy secret
until after the marriage
A marriage between the biological parents was not the only way to legitimise the parental relationship through marriage. Another strategy to allow the child to be brought up in a family that conformed to social expectations was to arrange a marriage between the mother and a man who was not the biological father of her child. There were covert arrangements, whereby parents attempted to arrange a marriage for their pregnant daughter without disclosing the pregnancy. Marriage bureaus or shelters such as the Shraddhanand Mahilashram also offered transparent matchmaking services that aimed to 'rehabilitate' women by restoring their reputation and economic security through an arranged marriage. In rare cases,the husband allowed the woman to bring her own child or children into the marriage.
Pien Bos, Andrea Abraham and Asha Narayan Iyer's research[FN5 Andrea Abraham, Sabine Bitter & Rita Kesselring (eds.), Mother Unknown. Adoption of Children from India in the Swiss Cantons of Zurich and Thurgau, 1973–2002, Zurich 2024.] shows that between the 1970s and 2000s, very few single mothers in India were able to keep their child. While in real-life adoption procedures and discourse the topic of the children's biological mothers was often considered taboo, they have long been a familiar figure in Indian literature and film. Many of these storylines feature abandoned, widowed or unwed single mothers, exploring the options open to them and portraying them as heroic figures who who succeed in resisting the adoption or reclaiming their child, or who are reunited with their child in later life.
