India’s Supreme Court ruling affirms the dignity of adoptive motherhood

India’s Supreme Court has struck down a provision that previously limited the maternity leave benefits of adoptive mothers. 

Key Takeaways:

• The Indian Supreme Court ruled that adoptive mothers are entitled to 12 weeks of maternity leave, regardless of the child's age.

• Previously, only women who adopted babies three months of age or younger were eligible for maternity leave benefits.

• Ironically, in a country where son preference is still strong, most of the children who are adopted are girls.

The Details:

The Indian Court ruled that adoptive mothers are entitled to 12 weeks of maternity leave regardless of the adopted child’s age, stating that the previous age restriction was discriminatory and incompatible with women’s constitutional rights to equality and dignified family life.

“Section 60(4) of the 2020 Code, insofar as it puts an age limit of three months on the age of the adoptive child for the adoptive mother to avail maternity benefit, is violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution,” the court ruled. “The impugned provision is held to be discriminatory both for the adoptive mother as well as the adoptive child. Adoption is an equally meaningful pathway for creating a family… biological factors cannot exclusively determine familial values and entitlements.” 

According to the court, denying maternity leave when the child is over three months old harms adoptive mothers and erodes the welfare and developmental requirements of adopted children.

The court explained that maternity leave serves not only for physical recuperation, but also to allow mothers time to nurture and form a bond with their children. It highlighted that these requirements remain consistent regardless of how old the child is when adopted.

Of note:

• Addressing practical realities, the court said that the previous three-month threshold failed to mirror the reality of adoption processes in India.

• Since legal processes frequently extend beyond this period, only a small number of children are adopted at such a young age.

• Consequently, many adoptive mothers could not enjoy the benefits of maternity leave.

Zoom In:

The Court ruled that the purpose of maternity protection — recovery, bonding, and caregiving — does not depend on biology, and should apply equally to adoptive and commissioning mothers “from the date of adoption.” 

The decree also proclaimed that non-biological routes to parenthood should be supported by social security on par with childbirth.

By its ruling, the court dismissed the notion that an older adopted child is less reliant on a mother’s presence than a newborn. Additionally, the court strongly prioritized the child’s best interests, pointing out that older children — especially those coming from institutional settings — often need more time to adjust emotionally and assimilate into a new family environment.

The court stated:

“A mother cannot be differentiated between one who brings home a child less than three months and one who adopts a child of a higher age. The paramount consideration has to be the best interest of the child… including the period required for the child to integrate into the new family."

The court urged the Indian government to institute statutory paternity leave as a social‑security benefit, indicating that Indian society should deem childcare as a collective duty of both parents.

The court emphasized that maternity benefits play a vital role in providing mothers with support, noting the importance of women’s unpaid domestic care and hailing it as a vital contribution to the economy.

India’s statutory maternity‑leave regime is premised on the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, which ensures 26 weeks of paid leave for qualified women expecting a child, with 12 weeks usually regarded as the post‑delivery phase. This perk works for both public and private establishments covered by the Act, and is aimed at physical recuperation, but also for setting up breastfeeding routines and early bonding between mothers and their children. 

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The Big Picture:

Adoption in India

India’s adoption system is overseen by the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, and managed by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), a statutory body under the Ministry of Women and Child Development. CARA supervises both in‑country and overseas adoptions, keeps a national database of children and prospective adoptive parents, and establishes eligibility criteria including age, marital status, and financial stability. 

Yearly adoption figures in India have been on a gradual upswing:

• In the financial year 2023–24, a total of 4,009 adoptions were registered, the highest since 2018–19, with 449 of these being inter‑country placements.

• In 2024–25, the figure rose to 4,515 child adoptions, of which 4,155 were domestic, hinting at a rising public acceptance of legal adoption and better identification and documentation of children who need adoptive families.

Who's being adopted... and why?

Data shows that over the past 10 years, about six out of 10 adopted children in India have been girls. Since 2013–14 (excluding 2017–18), around 13,962 boys were adopted compared to 20,396 girls, indicating that three out of every five adopted children are female.

Regional data under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act show similar patterns, with states such as Himachal Pradesh and Punjab documenting more girl‑child adoptions than boys.

Interestingly, this female‑skewed adoption pattern can be juxtaposed to the long-standing problem of sex‑selective practices and girl‑child discrimination in broader Indian society.

Many girls have been given up for adoption because they were abandoned, owing to economic pressures or their families’ bias for sons, which then ironically culminates in a preference for adopted daughters among willing parents.

The shadow of sex-selective abortion

However, the ominous shadow of female infanticide and sex‑selective abortion still hovers in Indian society.

Although the Pre‑Conception and Pre‑Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act of 1994 criminalized sex‑selective procedures and the disclosure of fetal sex for non‑medical reasons, underground clinics and illegal ultrasound networks still clandestinely function in states such as Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Bihar.

Official figures estimate that millions of female fetuses are aborted annually due to their sex, contributing to a greatly imbalanced sex ratio at birth and what some observers have depicted as tens of millions of “missing girls” over recent years. 

The Bottom Line:

In light of these circumstances, the Supreme Court’s recent acknowledgement of adoptive motherhood as equally dignified and worthy of state support as biological motherhood is a positive reinforcement that every child, regardless of age at adoption or biological origin, deserves to be welcomed into a family and safeguarded by law.

Not only must India protect preborn children, but also those who have already entered the world and been placed for adoption.

This move, along with robust bans on sex‑selective abortion and female infanticide, along with broader social security measures — such as non‑discriminatory parental leave — for all mothers could set a legal precedent and a moral imperative to treat every child with support and care.