As strange as this may sound, I haven't seen a child that was adopted, nor have I seen a family that adopted a child. It's not so common in my hood, and that's maybe because of the strict processes involved in adopting a child, or the situation whereby the parents of the couples would have scattered the marriage due to the disappointment of both couples not being able to produce a child, thereby pointing accusing fingers at either the man or the woman. The one that's very common here is the pattern of a couple picking a child either from the man's family or the woman's family to live with them as their child, and oftentimes the child picked is not well taken care of because the child is most times treated as though they are not a direct member of the family...and because there is no legal signing to this, the law don't have a say except a critical situation pops up.
I've heard a lot of real-life stories where adopted children were maltreated and were not given the same legal rights as members of the family, and to be very honest, none of those stories moved me because I've seen worse situations where families picked up a child within the extended family and treated the child very badly.
From my own point of view, I think one of the major reasons people in my hood, which is almost the same thing with a lot of people in other parts of the world, don't settle for proper adoption is because of the strict and prolonged processes involved. In child adoption, parents sign undertakings to take care of the children as their own and never maltreat them. I love how the processes are prolonged and the laws are strict respectively because, if not, there would have been a lot more violations of children's rights than what is happening in our world today.
If the processes were very easy, I'm very sure that anybody could easily take a child into their home even when the person is struggling daily just to feed themselves alone. Some people could have taken it as an escape from poverty whereby the adopted children are pushed into the streets to hustle for money for the parents. "But this happens," in case you want to say that, I know very well it's happening, but on very rare occasions whereby the government hasn't found out yet. Once they do, the family gets into a very serious legal case under the law.
If the laws were very simple and easy, some men would have opted to adopt young girls, raise them, and later turn them into sex machines, which is a very bad act and against the law. Yeah, absolutely anybody can adopt anybody for selfish reasons if the laws aren't strict.
Thanks for reading.