Why Most Indian Adoptees Are Girls in a Society that Prefers Sons: Unpacking a Demographic Paradox

In contemporary India, a persistent preference for sons is evident in adults’ declarations, contraceptive behavior, selective abortion of female fetuses, and postnatal sex discrimination. Yet, paradoxically, since at least the 2000s most children adopted are girls. This article investigates this paradox by analyzing, for the first time, administrative adoption data from the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and testing competing explanatory hypotheses. The results reveal no clear preference among adoptive parents for daughters, either nationally or regionally. Instead, in 2019 58 % of Indian in-country adoptees were girls because 58 % of adoptable children were girls. The predominance of girls among adoptees is primarily driven by the overrepresentation of girls among adoptable children, itself a consequence of the abandonment of girls and son preference. Adoption patterns thus reflect not a shift in parental attitudes but the continuing – though decreasing – devaluation of daughters in broader Indian society. This study sheds light on the complex interplay between gender norms, reproductive decisions, and adoption outcomes in a patrilineal context.