How crass can you be ?

Shinamae, that must have been so hard for you having to look after her for that amount of time. Lots of love to you xx

I hadn't heard of Magdalene laundries, until we moved to a bungalow in the grounds of a large house that had been one. Some snippets of history and stories of the women are horrendous, just so sad.

My mother was born in Feb 1928, my grandparents wed in November 1927... My grandmother was horrible and bitter to my mother and blamed her for being forced to marry, right up to the day my grandmother died. I'm not sure how my grandmother would have been if my mother had been taken away from her and adopted, I'm guessing my mother would have had a much nicer life.

JaneJudge

There wasn't just shame on the young Mothers themselves but on their parents and wider family also. Thank God things have changed with respect to that

Shiname, have you ever had contact with your daughter? (this might be a crass insensitive question also)

It is so true about the Fathers too. Lets not forget some of these babies will have been born because of sexual abuse too, which was also swept under the carpet

Many years ago, I did leave my details with an agency that was set up to put adoptees in touch with the birth mothers, but I never heard anything.
She had no choice in being adopted, but I respect her choice not to contact me.
My adoption was held up for some reason, and I had to keep her for 10 weeks, I was told that she was being adopted by two teachers who already had an adopted son
I was her birth mother, they are her parents..

So sorry for your loss Shinamae which of course lasts a lifetime and can never be healed. I was adopted so I am the other side of the coin. Nothing can heal the mother or the adopted baby.

Crass indeed. It seems that many interviewers are working to a rigid script, to the extent that even when the interviewee has already given them the information, they trot out a question which has them repeat it. So basically, they often aren't listening to what they're being told, and never really engage with the interviewee.

There wasn't just shame on the young Mothers themselves but on their parents and wider family also. Thank God things have changed with respect to that

Shiname, have you ever had contact with your daughter? (this might be a crass insensitive question also)

It is so true about the Fathers too. Lets not forget some of these babies will have been born because of sexual abuse too, which was also swept under the carpet

Apologies by politicians for events of the distant past are meaningless, e.g., slavery, forced adoption, etc.

I didn't see the interview.
It's amazing just how crass presenters can be .
But I think that sometimes they are " lost out for words "
I think that I would have said ,
" I can only imagine how devastingly terrible it was for you and that day must be something that you can never forget ."

I remember really floundering when a met a Jewish lady who'd lost her entire family in Auschwitz .
She's was one of many that I've met and it's hard to say the right thing .

Years ago , a rather irritating mother at my daughter's playgroup wanted to know why my parents didn't come to the nativity play .
I tried to skirt around her questions .
Eventually , I said the truth - both my parents are actually mentally ill -something which is very difficult for me to talk about .
To which , she replied
" Never mind , you've got your glam shoes on today ."
And laughed .

I wanted to punch her lights out !

It was Justin Webb and Amol Rajan today.
I think it was Rajan who asked because I was particularly cross about the "tone" of the questions. Justin Webb tends to sound less pushy and invasive to me.

I could be wrong (for this very reason!).

I don’t agree maytime I’ve listened to a few interviews on this subject over the last couple of days and this question is inevitably asked or the answer proffered voluntarily, irrespective of the sex of the interviewer. It’s an integral part of the whole subject.

Yammy it wasn't actually an open question if the wording of the OP is right.
But it was crass.

I'm glad you mention the father's easybee. As you say some just disappeared, my friend who brought her baby home eventually married her boyfriend and went on to have more children.
What she had done altered another forever she has never had a stable relationship and has broken many marriages by having affairs with married men. I can forgive her in some ways after being treated so cruelly.
As for people who were adopted into loving families I am pleased for them they got the love they deserved.

Thus it ever was eazybee

No.
The people to share some of the responsibility for these adoptions are the fathers of the babies. Very little is heard of them or from them; many disappeared like snow in the sunshine as soon as they learned of the pregnancy, (not all of them teenage schoolboys) and it was impossible to prove accurately who the father was.

Unfair to blame parents for not taking on a baby when their children were teenagers. Many parents did but at huge financial and emotional cost, and some mothers managed to survive, but only through a tremendous struggle.

People forget that to be an unmarried mother carried a huge stigma, there there were no benefits available, no suitable housing, no nurseries to enable the mother to work to support her child and no means of compelling the father to make any contribution. And certainly no safe abortion.

The past is foreign country, they do things differently there

At the time people really believed they were doing the best for both mother and baby. Moral values were different and there was little state help for parents at any level, married or not.

While women and children live who suffered under this system, I do think there is a place for governments to acknowledge the suffering of people under this system.

I sometimes wonder what we are doing now, which we think is kind and caring and the best way to help people in some unknown situation that we, in 50 years time will be condemned for, as being cruel and uncaring by the standards in place in 50 years time.

Well put Calendargirl

I'm so sorry for all of you who had to give up your babies for adoption
If its any consolation the majority of us were adopted by loving families and had a good life. I was a post war ' mistake'

Shinamae

I had my baby adopted from an unmarried mothers home in March 1972 and I absolutely remember everything about that day…. Including being told to dress her nicely, and put her in her crib in the nursery, and not to go in for the next hour…

The home itself was quite nice and the matron Mrs Liman. I still remember her now a lovely woman, a dour scot but with a heart of gold.
All the staff were lovely actually.
I just thank whatever that I did not go to the Magdalene laundries

Calendargirl

I too think that an apology decades later by subsequent governments or whatever are pointless and meaningless, and also think this applies to many other situations, not just forced adoptions. Talk’s cheap.

We can’t change what happened many years ago, we can only learn from the past.

Listening to some of the poor women who were forced to give up their babies, they seemed to feel that at least the apologies did go some way to acknowledging their situation. Nothing can change what happened to them, but the ones I saw being interviewed seemed to be genuinely grateful that this was now being acknowledged.

Calendargirl

I too think that an apology decades later by subsequent governments or whatever are pointless and meaningless, and also think this applies to many other situations, not just forced adoptions. Talk’s cheap.

We can’t change what happened many years ago, we can only learn from the past.

You have put it very clearly we should learn from the past.

He would have known that she did of course remember the day, hour and minute too! but it's their job to get the person to tell us about it.

I believe in these sorts of interviews it is usual for the interviewer to run through the kinds of questions s/he is likely to ask so that the interviewee can veto any that would be too upsetting. Obviously the program makers want to elicit as much "human interest" as possible but to avoid someone breaking down on camera. So when interviewers ask "how did you feel" the other party has an anticipation of what is coming.

I too think that an apology decades later by subsequent governments or whatever are pointless and meaningless, and also think this applies to many other situations, not just forced adoptions. Talk’s cheap.

We can’t change what happened many years ago, we can only learn from the past.

So sorry Shinamae. 💐

Shinamae . My husband was born in a maternity hospital where the unmarried mothers looked after the married ones, and saw their babies being taken away by the adoptive parents.