While it is a noble thing to do, adopting a stranger has not been a part of local culture and maybe considered Western.
According to African culture men are never sterile and adoption is considered an admission of inability to sire children. In the old days if family elders realise that their son has not been able to impregnate his wife they would be given a close relative’s child to take care of or organise that the younger brother or cousin secretly have sex with the wife and continue the family line.
Men who give in to the need to adopt are sometimes prone to all sorts of attacks from society. Some couples may also be accused of selfishness for adopting a stranger rather than taking care of poor relatives instead.
If a man passed on his siblings would share the responsibility of taking care of the children and, resultantly, no child was left to suffer on their own outside the family. It was taboo then to have child-headed families.
However, with the changing of times and abandonment of African tradition, coupled with teething economic challenges some children now fend for themselves. The burden of caring for such children has been shifted from the family to the State.
Therefore, the process of adopting children had to be legalised for the protection of such minors. Adoption now involves complete strangers who are prepared to assimilate children into their homes even if they do not share the same totem.
