Did anyone see the TV program yesterday on forced adoption?

My mother was forced into a mother and baby home by her parents (father as wives wouldn’t dare contradict) and I was adopted from there. She was 18 and therefore not legally an adult and my father was at sea. By the time he returned it was all arranged.
I traced my mother in my 30s when I had my own children and we now have a great relationship. … mainly via the phone as she lives along way from me.
The only person I need an apology from really is my now long dead grandfather. He was a product of the times but it was very wrong and I have suffered badly with adopted person’s syndrome all my life.

It happened to my friend in 1969. She was visited by two social workers and persuaded it was for the best. She has never heard from her child.

Not only the wrenching apart. Of mother and baby but there is a lot coming out now about how the drugs given to these poor girls to dry up their milk have long lasting effects including cancer
www.sundaypost.com/fp/forced-adoption-drug/
I know someone who was adopted, she had a happy life but decided to find her mum, and discovered that her parents subsequently married as soon as they could without parental consent and she had several full, siblings. Their parents thought they couldn't take care of her, wouldn't let them marry which they wanted to do
We think that in the Victorian times parents would throw their pregnant daughters out and disown them, but looking at my family tree, it rarely happened, the daughter would live at hime. With the baby and either would help grandma or older sister around the house with her younger siblings, or grandma or an older sister would look after the baby while she went out to work, or a combination of those. If a mother was abandoned by her husband or widowed again she would often move back with mum or another family member. If a baby was orphaned, same thing. Grandma might have been furious at what happened but if the man wouldn't or couldn't marry her, the baby was part of the family. It didn't stop women getting married either, a year or. So down the line. Not every woman wanted to marry even in such circumstances, didn't want to bear another 8 or 9 children, which could have happened and she had the family support when it was needed to do that. But if she did want. To marry there were always men who would take on a child, or who were widowed and needed someone to look after their children.
There were a number of those grandmas who had conceived a child out of wedlock themselves and knew what it was like.

During my teenage years my mother did all she could to keep me away from boys and there were regular warnings about ‘getting in to trouble’.
I was still living with my widowed mum when I became pregnant at the age of 26 in 1980. Even then I was asked to move away so the neighbours wouldn’t know. Whilst in hospital after the birth of my child, a social worker turned up at my mother’s request. Because she had expressed doubts about my ability to look after my child, they had to go into foster care whilst my ability as a mother was assessed.
I was one of the lucky ones - I got my child back at 3 months. I had a good job and was able to provide for her well. We have a wonderful relationship but I never forget how different it might have been or really forgave my mother, although she did go on to love my child too.
My heart goes out to all of you who were not as fortunate as me.

My sister was adopted. She was born in a Salvation Army home for unmarried mothers. She never traced her birth mother so we never knew how she had felt about giving up her daughter.

This was in Scotland in 1956.

Social pressure and the fact that she could not support the child will have been factors. The father, a commercial traveller had promised to marry her, but confronted with the fact that his girlfriend was pregnant, turned round and admitted that he was already married, and had no intention of asking his wife for a divorce.

The young mother, 15 or 16, had earned her living waitressing, and was chucked out of her parental home when she was forced to admit the predicament she was in.

As I say, I have no idea if she felt forced to give up her child, or saw it as the best way to give her baby a good chance in life.

Neither giving a child up for adoption, fostering, or choosing abortion are easy choices, never have been, and never will be.

A happy ending for your friend and family Romola.

One of my friends had a baby at 17, in 1963. In those days, it was more or less expected that she would give up the baby for adoption.
But s/he has epilepsy. Potential adopters wanted only "perfect" white babies, so my friend had to take the baby. She did have support from her family and she met and married a good man who adopted the baby, now a middle-aged person with a good life.

Visit the Foundling Museum in London to know what true deprivations and cruelties existed for women giving up their children. What hit me most was each woman was given the opportunity to leave something with the baby so they could be associated with said item. They had so little, so a piece of cloth or a coin was left.
My daughter is the manager of an adoption team and very few babies are given up for adoption nowadays. It’s is a very emotive subject .

I suppose nowadays, apart from mums keeping their babies, there are many more terminations.

Not (legally) available back then.

My cousin's girlfriend had a baby in the mid-sixties, they were both sixteen. Her parents were desperate for the baby to be adopted, but his parents were determined to keep the baby, so they kept the little girl for two years, and then the young couple got married and brought her up. I always remember my auntie saying "You don't give away your own flesh and blood!"

There's always the possibility that some of those mums who were so adamant that their daughter had to give up their baby, had been through the same thing themselves as young girls. (either via a formal adoption or informally).They may have spent their lives trying to convince themselves they'd done the right thing for their baby.
Most families could make room for a baby if they decided to. There can't have been many families poorer or more over-crowded than my paternal grandparents, but they looked after my auntie & her baby until she & her boyfriend were in a position to marry. No-one starved.

There were several children in our village who most of our Mothers knew were not with their birth mothers.

One was a girl whose mother found herself pregnant but not by her husband. She had a couple of children already. She was given to a quite wealthy couple in the village who were unable to have kids. An unofficial adoption I guess.

A young school teacher gave birth to a mixed race boy. She was very quiet and lived with her elderly mother but had a fling with a US serviceman. To her credit and very unusually for the times she brought him up with her mother’s help and he has done very well for himself. This would have been 1950s.

@Grammaretto Thankyou. I have never considered DNA test but might do.
My father resembled his own father both in looks and temperament. I look like my father as well and my DS2 has the same dark eyes and smallish build.

JaneJudge - apologies if you felt I was being critical, I wasnt.
It’s such a sad chapter in our history. Young mums left feeling they messed up and often losing babies thst with social changes they’d have kept ten years later

One of my adopted nephews who tried to find his birth mother is mixed race. It transpired that she was white Scottish Roman Catholic from a family from a close knit community in the west of Scotland.
Her name is Irish. Her son was adopted in London where he was born and where she had been living t for some time. She tried to keep him but when he was about 3 months old she placed him with nuns in a children's home where he stayed for about 7months.
When my Dsis and DBiL went to the home they were told he'd had no visits for a long time and his DM wasn't traceable.
They took him home and fostered him for a year and then applied yo adopt.
His birth mother's permission was required so she was found but didn't want him to be adopted.
She was pregnant again but still had nowhere to live with a baby or two.
I don't know what happened next or whether she was pressured but she agreed to the adoption and at the age of 2½ he was adopted.
He's now over 50, has 3 DC of his own.
They were very different times back then.

Your post was honest Jane. These were different times and your mum wasn’t alone in her beliefs. It was common to feel shame if an unmarried girl or woman became pregnant, as there are communities today who still feel that way.
It was only the bravest families who supported their daughters by letting them keep their babies and live at home. While the fathers got away scot free….
It happened for years.

This would be in the 70s and 80s fwiw.

My post was honest. Where I grew up girls were very much 'shamed' The girls in my own family were 'sent away' and then came back after a period of months so that things could be 'hidden'. Lots of chattering. It really was horrible. I love my Mother but she could be unkind too (she has thankfully managed to move on from this misogynistic attitude) There was a real lack of empathy

It’s important to try not to judge or make sweeping generalisations but that doesn’t mean we’d repeat some brutal things considered ‘right’ years ago.

We are more knowledgable now about the emotional and psychological impact of trauma. Giving birth and seeing your baby removed is traumatic. Girls were told to forget - similar approach to other trauma victims.

These were not state forced adoptions. They were considered the only real option as single mums were ostracised, children called bastards, no benefits or meaningful housing support.

Usually it was parents who insisted on adoption though many babies were absorbed into their birth families with everyone told grannie had a surprise late baby

Grammaretto

Shelflife

I had a college placement in a mother and baby ' home' I was 18 , some of the girls in there were younger than me. It has had profound effect on me and is something I will never forget - I hated it because of the way the girls were treated and I had to watch babies being taken away and their mothers distraught. It was truly and literally a shocking experience - but so very much worse for those young mums.
It was always the girls that were shamed - it takes two !!! The father's if these children were never mentioned. Double standards indeed ! Women have been persecuted throughout history.

That must have been deeply upsetting for you.

My DSis and DBiL adopted 2 boys. As adults they both succeeded in tracing their birth mothers. One met his but didn't feel any connection though he is quite close to a half sister. The other spoke on the phone to his but she didn't want to meet him. She was married with other DC and had moved on. Sad but true.
Both felt a sense of closure and didn't crave a relationship.

I watched the film Philomena recently. It's very good and shows how with the culture of shame in Ireland at that time it was quite impossible for an unmarried girl to keep her baby.

A film can't give you the picture for everyone in a country. My mother grew up close to her cousin who grew up with her mother and grandparents. No adoption was forced, mother and baby accepted by the whole family.

So definitely not impossible.

My DH was adopted at 6 weeks in the 1960s. His mother was unmarried and from a very catholic family. He was born in a catholic mother and baby home in the south east. I don’t believe his mother had any real choice in the matter. Late last year he did an ancestry DNA test and found a half brother. He has now made contact with his mother and has 4 half siblings who are all delighted and can’t wait to meet him. He has had a correspondence with his mother and they are hoping to meet in spring. He has always had problems with attachment which, according to the latest research, probably stem from him being separated from his mother in addition to him being adopted by a loving but undemonstrative family. I don’t think there were a lot of cuddles growing up!

pinkprincess that's exactly the same as my DGF. His older sister was actually his biological mother. In a family of 12 siblings perhaps it wasn't much noticed. What was odd was that his sister/mother married the child's father and had another 9 DC.

Nothing was said apart from rumours and it wasn't until I had my DNA tested a few years ago that I was able to confirm the rumours as I am so closely related to this other family.

Could you test your DNA to find the identity of your biological gt grandfather?

I remember the 50’s , marriages called shotgun weddings, many were not happy, for the woman or the man

My paternal grandfather was born to an unmarried mother in the 1890s. She was the oldest of a large family and her parents brought him up as one of their own. He was an adult before he discovered his oldest sister was his mother.She had worked away from home in various live in jobs as a nurse or housekeeper.Then she got married while in her forties and emigrated abroad with her husband.He was never told the identity of his biological father
I can remember my grandmother telling me that he must have been a very good looking man as my grandfather did not resemble any of his relatives whom she described as ''very plain looking''

Shelflife

I had a college placement in a mother and baby ' home' I was 18 , some of the girls in there were younger than me. It has had profound effect on me and is something I will never forget - I hated it because of the way the girls were treated and I had to watch babies being taken away and their mothers distraught. It was truly and literally a shocking experience - but so very much worse for those young mums.
It was always the girls that were shamed - it takes two !!! The father's if these children were never mentioned. Double standards indeed ! Women have been persecuted throughout history.

That must have been deeply upsetting for you.

My DSis and DBiL adopted 2 boys. As adults they both succeeded in tracing their birth mothers. One met his but didn't feel any connection though he is quite close to a half sister. The other spoke on the phone to his but she didn't want to meet him. She was married with other DC and had moved on. Sad but true.
Both felt a sense of closure and didn't crave a relationship.

I watched the film Philomena recently. It's very good and shows how with the culture of shame in Ireland at that time it was quite impossible for an unmarried girl to keep her baby.