Stolen Babies (BBC Iplayer)

These were different times and had more parents supported their daughters thus woukd not have happened, but because of shame and terrible embarrassment most parents threw their daughters out or sent them to mother and baby homes to have the baby, before allowing them to return home with a tale about ‘a long visit with ‘relatives’.

The other option was to allow the baby back but brought up as an older sisters/ cousins child. Some of these fathers took responsibility willingly or took the shotgun wedding option but most carried on without censure. ‘Did they have to get married ‘ was a common question at the time. Judgmental attitudes were to the fore, by all.

There was no financial or any other help for girls who had babies while unwed, the shame was intense so the government and religious organisations took over their ‘care’.

I lived through those pre pill times and know how those who were left pregnant were treated, and no doubt those in authority were also harsh because of the views at the time, but watching the programme very little was mentioned about the majority of parents who were not prepared to support their pregnant daughters. Which led them having to find help elsewhere, certainly dangerous back street abortions were rife.

I am Not sure when financial and housing support for unmarried girls started, but as a social worker in the early 80s, I met a number who admitted they had deliberately become pregnant in order to be given a flat and financial benefits by the council.

One of my granddaughters had a baby in the middle of her final year at school. She returned as a mother the following year, completed her schooling and went on to uni for 4 years. She had lots of help from both sets of parents and 10 years later the couple married and had 2 more children. Very happy together and I am proud to have a great grandson of 15 - one of the many advantages of being a very,very young mother as a granddaughter.
What difference to how it used to be !

I watched 'A House in Our Time' last night and it looked at Edinburgh in the 1930s. What those poor women had to go through who lived in the slum tenements was beyond belief.

I too was angry at the way fathers were hardly mentioned and rape was somehow the girl's fault!
Adoption was a term of abuse and babies being chosen almost from a catalogue. All shocking.

Yes, There seemed to be no mention of them being immoral .

A very moving programme. My DH was born 4 months after his parents were married in 1951. His Mum was very lucky at for that time that she /they were supported by both families. Whether they married by choice or were not given the option we don’t know, it’s never spoken about.

Shocking. I watched with DH & DS (50). Unusually we watched this in almost total silence. DH said he had no idea that sore of thing went on.
So pleased to see that some of the women were reunited with their children later but of course it should never have happened in the first place. Really felt for the girl who was raped by her teacher, and the girl (I think it might have been in the 80’s) whose father pushed her away when she told her parents. I do think those parents should take some of the blame as well as all the authorities

My daughter, now 28, had a boy in her class whose mother gave birth to him at 15.

When her parents discovered she was pregnant, too late to terminate, they literally threw her out of the family home. This was 1997.

I was utterly horrified and befriended her.

She didn’t work, had a string of very unsuitable partners, then gave birth to an another boy in 2002, and he was in our younger son’s class.

She was totally off the rails, but not on drugs.

At this time I was working evenings and had 3 young children. I encouraged (she said “made”) her to come to mother and baby groups, then mother and toddler as her second child grew older. Once our youngest started school together I started working days at our local jobcentre.

She was claiming income support.

I “encouraged” her to look for work, got her “interview” clothes courtesy of the jobcentre and she got part time work in our local Sainsbury. She met and married on of the deputy managers. She’s still at Sainsbury, she is now the shop manager and working full time, her husband moved to a different job. Three years ago they managed to purchase their own property.

I’ll never forget the horror of hearing her story and how casually her parents threw her out and cut her off without a penny to her name!

I have watched now and was so sad.
Our culture, luckily has changed a great deal.
David Steel's abortion act of 1967 after which babies for adoption became much rarer must have been a factor.

I too was angry at the way fathers were hardly mentioned and rape was somehow the girl's fault!
Adoption was a term of abuse and babies being chosen almost from a catalogue. All shocking facts.

In my family history there are instances of babies being brought up by grandparents or other relatives unofficially without records kept, just gossip and legend.

After the 2nd world War there were even more so-called unwanted babies to adopt and a relative wanted a sister for their only son so adopted a baby girl. All she knows is her DF was Polish.

My DS and DBiL adopted 2 DC in the 1970s when married couples were encouraged to adopt mixed race children from care homes to blend with their own birth children. This came with its own difficulties and a lot of these adoptions broke down.

nanna8

Yes - a lot of things are worse now but a helluva lot are a whole stack better. Not in every country,though. You still have female oppression and child brides in some places and things like grooming gangs in parts of the UK .But that is swept under the carpet in much the same way as stealing babies used to be.

Grooming gangs across the whole of Europe, it’s not just “peculiar” to the UK.

Have absolutely no doubt that there are “paedophile rings” across the entire Western world.

Yes - a lot of things are worse now but a helluva lot are a whole stack better. Not in every country,though. You still have female oppression and child brides in some places and things like grooming gangs in parts of the UK .But that is swept under the carpet in much the same way as stealing babies used to be.

When people go on about how much better things were "Back in the day" I think they should be reminded that all sorts of unacceptable things went on and this is just one example.

I found the piece about the man who made an underage girl pregnant and was found not guilty of any wrong doing, because she was seen to be a liar, particularly shocking.

The other men who made these women pregnant hardly got a mention in the programme and it is probable that in many cases they neither knew nor cared that they had fathered a child. I still shudder when I hear people say "She got herself pregnant."

Very moving, and rarely enough records for tracing.

I don’t think single mothers are condemned at all. Certainly not in Australia. However, going back to the 1950s and 1960s they certainly were, frequently. Many women have children with no male around at all via surrogacy or IVF now. Times have changed.

My other half and I watched it, how horrible for them ,how could anyone treat these young women like that, thank goodness no young girls have to go through that now,and that was right up till 1976.their parents just abandoned them.
well thank god things have changed

Yes very moving programme. These young women were treated abysmally.
Why were the unmarried girls always blamed and not the men?

It wasn,t just Ireland or Catholic institutions it was UK wide .I know several people who were told to”get rid or get out” and they were from so called Christian families.
One girl whose parents threw her out at just 14!The father was in his 20s yet they blamed the girl.
She ended up giving her baby to a neighbour to raise and he was grown up before he knew his story .
I knew getting pregnant in my family was a no chance,my sister did aged 19 .
My mother went ballistic ,my sister left home and lived with a friend until her wedding that none of us were invited to.It took a long time to heal the rift though sadly she had a still birth at 30 weeks.
I remember my mother saying the neighbours would be counting the weeks between the wedding and the birth.
When people ,mainly older people moan about single mothers nowadays I ask if they,d prefer going back to the days when young women were vilified?
There are also many again older people who say there’s no excuse for unplanned pregnancies nowadays but no contraceptive is 100% reliable.Maybe we should remember those mother and baby homes before condemning single mothers.

No, but I’ll probably watch it.

I quite enjoy (perhaps wrong expression) these documentaries.

DH is Irish and we’ve watched a few things about those poor unmarried mums and mums to be, specifically in Ireland.

Such a travesty. So many many worse “crimes” than having sex before marriage and having a baby.

Shocking behaviour towards these young women.

The young or not so young men involved in making these babies often seem to “get off” scott free 😕😕