Diarmaid Ferriter: The issue of illegal adoptions will not go away irishtimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from irishtimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Former Senator Averil Power said the Government’s apology on the mother and baby homes means nothing unless adoptive people and their parents are given “basic human rights”.
IN the late 1960s a child arrived at Pelletstown mother and baby home in Navan Road, Dublin, on the recommendation of a paediatrician. The child had been placed for adoption but was being returned . A note said the child s adoptive mother was reluctant to keep baby. she considers him retarded. Admit to St Patrick s Home .
Two years later the child was declared of average intelligence and well suited to adoption or boarding . A letter from a Pelletstown medical officer to the Adoption Board said his initial backwardness was due to environmental conditions .
The final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes documents the shameful treatment of mothers and their children born out of wedlock.
Sheila Wayman
11 min read The continuing anguish around how thousands of Irish babies were put up for adoption for all the wrong reasons was painfully evident from last weekâs January is Health Month in The Irish Times. Throughout the month, in print and online, we will be offering encouragement and inspiration to help us all improve our physical and mental health in 2021. See
âThe mothers did not have much choice,â the commission acknowledged, even if it declined to describe them as âforced adoptionsâ. Societal and religious pressures, along with lack of financial supports, made it very difficult for women during much of the 1922-1998 period under review, to see how raising a child out of wedlock would be possible never mind desirable.
A little over 50 years ago, the Sunday Independent s Brenda Maguire wrote a column advocating adoption as a practical solution for unmarried mothers and their babies. The article, and the response of an articulate young single mother, illustrates the culture of a time and an issue that Ireland is still grappling with today. Unmarried mothers give birth to babies, children whose birth is more an embarrassment than a joy, she wrote on page 11 of the February 9, 1969 edition. Once the baby is born and has been given up for adoption, the mother can pass into anonymity.
In response, the paper published letters some weeks later from two unmarried mothers, one Catholic, one Protestant. The Catholic mother not only dissented from the view of Brenda Maguire, but set out the harrowing realities of life for unmarried mothers in what many of us regarded as the modern era but now seems like the dark ages.