Russians Back Domestic Adoptions but Don’t Want to Be Parents

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – November 13, 2013) While most Russians believe that orphans should be adopted by Russian families, only 16 percent are willing to bring a child into their homes, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Some 62 percent of Russians say that growing up in an adoptive family is better than in a Russian orphanage, and more than 73 percent believe that adoption by Russian parents is preferable to adoption by foreigners, according to the poll commissioned by the Foundation for Supporting Children in Difficult Situations, RIA Novosti reported.

Another 32 percent of respondents said that foreign adoption was unacceptable under any circumstances.

Yet 82 percent of respondents said they would never adopt a child, citing insufficient income, a lack of government support and poor housing conditions. Another 16 percent said they would be willing to adopt a child at some unspecified point in the future.

In an example of how wary Russians are about adopting children, it emerged this month that only one of the 33 orphans in St. Petersburg who were to get new homes in the U.S. has been adopted by a Russian family since Russia banned adoptions by U.S. families in January.

In the new poll, about a half of respondents said that children under 12 months old were best suited for adoption, while about one in every four respondents said that children aged between 1 and 2 years might also be adopted. Only 10 percent of respondents said that children aged 3 to 5 stood a chance of finding an adoptive family.

Nearly 94 percent of respondents said that negligent parents should be punished for failing to protect their children’s interests, with 28 percent favoring prison terms, 83 percent supporting community service, and nearly 66 percent favoring a ban for such parents to have any more children.

No margin of error was given for the poll of 1,952 people across the country.