Should there be apologies made for adoptions

As it was the universal attitude of society at that time maybe "society" should apologise. I had a couple of friends pushed into shot gun weddings at 17 who only went through with it to enable them to keep the baby. Their parents had said otherwise it was adoption as what they had done was shameful. They considered themselves lucky the boy stayed around for them. The past is a different country I don't see how a present day Government can really apologise for the past although I agree with Ilovecheese if it helps in some way.

I lived near a mother and baby home in 1970 and 1971. I was a teenage mum myself but I was married but I used to get dirty looks on the bus as I had to get off right at the gate to the home. I didn't have a phone, not unusual then, so would phone my mum from the phone box. While waiting for my turn I would often hear girls begging their mothers to come and see the baby, "You won't want me to give him away if you only see him." It was heartbreaking.

I remember one little girl being dropped off. She must have been 13 or 14 and was wearing Clark's school sandals, her little brothers (I assume that's who they were) were waving to her as her dad marched her off. Her mother didn't even turn her head to say goodbye. It has always stuck in my mind.

Girls did keep babies but they needed their parents support. I think the parents have more to answer for than the government.

When I was in hospital having my daughter, I was in a ward of six new mothers. One was a young woman who gave birth to the most beautiful girl, but the young woman was unmarried.

From the time of the babies birth for 5 days, the young woman spent the time holding the baby and crying. On the fifth day two women came and took the baby. I don’t think that there was another young mother in that ward who wasn’t traumatised by this outrage, and something I doubt any of us ever forgot.

That was in 1971.

Wel, actually I think that too. There’s certainly no harm in government apologising, I just wonder if it would do any good, since government now isn’t responsible for prevailing attitudes in the 50s and 60s when a lot of these adoptions appear to have happened.

You mean the women whose babies were taken away without their consent. Really?

I was in an unmarried mothers home run by the church and had my baby girl adopted in March 1972 when I was 19 and she was 10 weeks old... I had to sign papers and was told I would never see or hear about her once the papers were signed and the only thing I was told was that her new father and mother were teachers and that she would have an older brother... I can well remember the day the matron told me to dress her nicely and leave her in the crib in the nursery and not to go in there for next half hour and, of course when I did eventually go in she was gone.... can’t really think what got an apology would do...

Ilovecheese that is exactly what I was thinking. It would be the parents first and foremost putting on the adoption pressure the other authorities would have seen themselves as supporting the parents decision.

I think that the girls parents should be the ones to apologise if any of them are still alive.
However if an apology from the Government would in any small way help to ameliorate the grief of those poor women then why not? Where would be the harm?

My husband was adopted in the mid 50’s.
He thinks it is ridiculous.

The Catholic Church probably should apologise, they were still running the Magdalene laundries until 1996 which says a lot about their attitude.

A girl I knew became pregnant to a priest, she was 16, it was all hushed up, my parents told me to stay away from her! She was trouble.

The priest was moved to another parish.

My father told me the laundries would have sorted her out and couldn’t understand why we didn’t have such a facility in England.