Take the case of Vladimír — who did not want to be fully identified — and his wife, who applied to adopt a child more than five years ago when they discovered they could not have children of their own. They're still waiting.

"After we applied, we had to do all these psychological tests," Vladimír recalls. "Then nothing happened for about a year and a half though the tests turned out well."

When Vladimír's wife unexpectedly became pregnant, authorities told the family that their chances of acquiring a child through adoption had become next to nothing. Childless couples have priority.

"It was a high-risk pregnancy and we were told we wouldn't be able to have more children after that," says Vladimír. "We still wanted to have more than one child, and now they're telling us we don't have a right to have more than one child. It's frustrating."

According to Kateřina Beránková from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, an unexpected pregnancy shouldn't affect the adoption process.

But Marie Vodičková of the Children in Need Fund says cases like this are all too common. "Parents who want to adopt face a very long, complicated process," she says. "It sometimes seems that the authorities would prefer to keep children in state institutions."

According to Vodičková, keeping kids in institutions is a tradition that has its roots in the communist regime, when authorities considered the state to be better able to care for children. "It makes sense when you think about it," she says. "People who run these institutions don't want them to close down."

Jaroslava Lukešová, who runs the Thomayerova Hospital nursery in Prague 4–Krč, disagrees.