Stolen babies, unwed mothers

[Lilith7]

Most of our generation will know, or know of, women coerced into giving up their babies years ago. In those days the choices were to either marry (sometimes known as a shotgun wedding) which sometimes proved to be a disaster but occasionally worked, or to 'go up north for a while' to a home for unmarried mothers to have the baby where they'd be well away from their families & friends so that no one would know about the pregnancy.
Sometimes they worked up till the birth, sometimes not but then they were pressured to give the child up. Some places cruelly refused to allow mums to even see their baby on the grounds it would 'make things easier'.

And now decades later those women are speaking out about their experiences.



https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/1302692...nt-apology

  

[b]Thousands of unwed Kiwi mothers had their babies taken away from them during the post-war decades. Nearing the ends of their lives many are still fighting for a government apology, as Katie Doyle reports.[/b]

Kaaren Svendsen curled up on a hospital bed and sobbed as the cries of her stolen newborn echoed in her head.

She’d been asking nurses where her baby was as she recovered from giving birth.

“I went looking for her. I could hear her crying. I knew that she was the baby that was crying because all the other babies were out with their mothers being fed.

“I went to the door and a nurse chased me away and told me I was not allowed to go in there.”

It was years before Svendsen saw her daughter again. The child was placed for adoption against her wishes – a common practise in the post-war decades, when society thought it was improper for a single unwed mother to raise children on her own.

From the late 1940s through to the early 1970s thousands of young women had their children forcibly taken off them under the guise that everyone would be better off for it.

The cruel practise guaranteed a supply of newborn infants for married couples unable to have children; particularly for men who found their fertility impacted by their service in World War II.

The Government has never apologised to the mothers who had their babies taken away and time is running out, with many of them now in their 80s.

Getting pregnant as a teenager was easy during the ‘baby scoop’ era of the 1950s-1970s, partly because it was illegal to even discuss contraception if you were under the age of 16.

Adoption researcher Dr Anne Else, who is an adoptee herself, says there was a surge in forced adoption when children born during the post-war baby boom reached adolescence and started exploring their sexuality.

“Before World War II illegitimate children would often end up in institutions, and would die at a very high rate,” she says.

Those who did want to try and keep their babies ran up against powerful social forces, with doctors, families and religious institutions working to remove their children.

“The line was, ‘if you really love your baby, you will give it up for adoption, because it will have a good life with a married couple who will love it and look after it’,” says Else"

[Zurdo]

On my mother's side of the family, the babies were adopted out...gone. My Grandfather wanted nothing to do with them, just another mouth to feed. Even the orphaned children of his oldest son...just gone. I have a cousin who found out he was adopted when he was 59, and tracked us down, and also found he had a brother, also adopted out. My mother used to write all the time to her sisters, in Taumarunui, Te Awamutu and Tokanui...I thought Tokanui was just another town. After having both her children taken, she lived most of her life in Tokanui, and died there.

On my father's side, the illegitimate children were absorbed into the family. When my Grandfather's oldest sister had a baby, she was brought up as his younger sister. When the older sister wanted to leave home, and take her daughter, my Great Grandfather said ''No, I brought her up as my daughter, so she stays here, as my daughter.''

Two different approaches from Irish families.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Following on the recent research that indicates adoption, even well managed leaves lifelong trauma, we need to revisit social and legal practices as part of the social change that is well underway.

And I say that as someone who went through the adoption approval  process in the eighties, and was later a solo mother encouraged to give my child up - by Plunket of all people...

Things have changed for the better, but revising the past? Not possible...

[Lilith7]

True, we can't change the past. All we can do is to learn from it, & try to do better - which is somewhat scary when we consider that the forced adoptions were done from good motives.

Perhaps more open adoptions, with some rules around that, may be a better way to go if we must have adoptions.

And prior to those forced adoptions, families sometimes managed things so a daughter's child would be brought up as a sibling.
The world back then could be a very cruel place to women who became pregnant outside marriage. I remember a friend's brother than 'having to get married' to his then fiancée who opted to have their baby at one of the Bethany hospitals which also took a lot of unmarried mums. When friend went to visit she found her new sister in law making scathing comments about 'those unmarried girls'. I think she was then reminded that, if not for friend's brother 'doing the right thing' then she would have been one of them.