Why do middle aged women have to lobby Parliament for a Public Inquiry into
past adoption practice? To answer this I need to talk about the history of
adoption.
Prior to 1926 - guardianship, wardship and the private adoption of mainly
older children were the norm. The 'bad blood theory' prevented most people
from adopting infants - as adopted parents wished to see how the child
progressed before making a commitment
The 1926 Adoption act was initiated so that adoptees could inherit, the
increased stability (not the inherent secrecy) the act gave to the
adoptee/adoptive family was more a by-product of the 1926 act and had never
really been considered a reason for the inception of the policy. Adoption was
still only for un-titled plebes, it was not legal for the landed gentry and
the peers of the realm to bequeath their titles and estates to their adopted
children, you see the aristocracy believed then as they still do today, in the
blue blood line and pedigrees'.
The majority of adoptions preceding and post the 1926 act were still of older
children, with a trickle of numbers approx. 5K per year up to the Second World
War.
Child Migration accounted for a huge number of babies and children being sent
to the colonies - over a 100k between 1900-1967. Some were as young as 18
months of age, all sent without parental consent, for economic and
social/racial engineering purposes. At that time it cost 15s per week to keep
a child in care in the UK, in 1948 in Australia it was half that amount.
Australia was also terrified of being invaded by the 'yellow peril' and wanted
to populate with good British Stock! The blasé attitude with which
philanthropists and social workers administered child migration laid the
foundation for the way unmarried mothers would be treated in the post-war
period.
The history of social work is interwoven with the history of adoption. After
the First World War women's roles changed forever. They were expected to find
paid employment - that is the ones that could not find a husband to keep them.
There was a huge shortage of single men, and for the first time single middle
class women looked for work. Many went into social work in private agencies
with a philanthropic fervour (men had always done this work prior to the first
world war) They brought with it a bitterness, punitiveness, and a huge chip of
moral outrage to their undeserving clients who so desperately needed their
help.
Jane Rowe a leading adoption social worker in the 50's, 60's and 70's stated
"White girls who have illegitimate babies by coloured men are often
emotionally ill as well as socially defiant" Rowe further claimed "that
married women having out-of wedlock children tend to be rather disturbed
people. While the American middle-class girl flouting the conventions by an
illegitimate pregnancy may well be emotionally sicker than her English,
working-class cousins".
Adoption didn't begin in earnest until after the Second World War, following
the inception of Beveridge's 1948 National Assistance Act
Beveridge had expressed a patriarchal concern for the importance of children
being reared in the proper domestic environment, and was anxious not in any
way to encourage illegitimacy, or immorality. Evidence of patriarchal
domination by Beveridge is revealed through his conditions of claim for
divorced and separated women, a woman had to prove that she was the innocent
party in a divorce or separation to claim a separate allowance. Beveridge's
document also encouraged a pervasive concern pertaining to reinforcing and
encouraging marriage, which almost amounted to marriage being defined as a
vital occupation and career. Welfare Benefits were only payable when certain
standards of morality (as defined by the ruling patriarchy) were adhered to.
Women 'living in sin' were targeted by this 'new morality' legislation, which
in fact denied benefit to any woman cohabiting, this ruling and other similar
practices were strictly enforced by an army of official snoopers, employed by
the Government during the 50s, 60s and 70s.
The Church also jumped on this reproductive soapbox when the Archbishop of
Canterbury declared to the Mothers Union in 1952, the "One child deliberately
willed as the limit is no family at all but something of a misfortune, for
child and parents. Two children accepted, as the ideal limit does not make a
real family - a family only truly begins with three children'.
We now all know that this was Government propaganda at its finest, all that
was missing was Lord Haw Haw narrating the plot. The Government had to get
women out of the work-place and out of the factories where they had replaced
the men-folk at war, get them back into the home, behind the kitchen sink,
pregnant and barefoot were they belong, so that their men could have their
jobs back and of course retain the power and control.
Bonnie Burstow provides the following clear definition of patriarchy: "In the
world that elite males create and that other men and women are at once
privileged and victimized by, women are less than men; Black and Red men are
less than white men; Black and Red men's women are less than white men's
women; the working class are less than the ruling class; nature is an
expendable commodity to be exploited; and the objectifying stance on which
this is all based is celebrated as the scientific method".
It is quite important to understand what power has to do with adoption - it
can be defined as follows: Some women have power over other women and benefit
from maintaining the status quo. For example, it is not difficult to imagine
how these relations of power may work in an area such as adoption, and that it
was no accident that placements of children in adoption tend to mirror these
relations of power - poor to rich; Black to White; 'third world' country to
'developed' country.
There has been approx. 890k adoption since 1926, of which 750k have been of
infant/new-born babies, adoptions that have denied the natural mothers the
opportunity to parent their offspring - babies adopted out to strangers. The
majority were adopted in the 50s, 60s and 70s the golden year 1968 when there
was 27.5k adoptions, in comparison last year there was 300 infant adoptions in
the whole year - in 1968 there was 600 per week!
In fact there was such a surplus of babies at this time that babies with a
squint/red hair were unadoptable, as were babies with minor handicaps. The
majority of these babies were returned to the natural mother to rear, somehow
she was capable of looking after a handicapped baby that would need expert
care, but not of a normal healthy infant.
This was shameful and amoral, did all these women really reject their first
born or was there a deeper more horrifying reason for this mass maternal
rejection? If so did the Government augment a study into this holocaust?
Pat Basquill's story The damage that coercive adoption inflicted upon the
mother and child was well known by the professional's involved within the
adoption industry at this time, a 15 year study concluded in 1967 by Wilfred
Jarvis a clinical psychologist in NSW states; "Mothers who surrender their
children for adoption seem to suffer chronic bereavement for the rest of their
lives. And, as if to complement this, adopted children usually manifest a keen
and often obsessional wish to locate their natural mothers, which becomes
dominant during adolescence"
Dr. Donald Gough spent many years studying unmarried mothers in the unmarried
mother's homes; he spoke to the Standing Conference of Adoption in 1962 about
adoption being economic, punitive and a cure for infertility. If only he had
known then that the barbaric result of this insidious practice would result in
over one third of natural mother (250K) having secondary infertility.
Coercive adoption does not only affect the natural mother and child, it
affects all other relatives; 750K natural fathers, grandparents, siblings and
partners.
Irish siblings letter. So what went wrong? How did adoption become a cure for
immorality, infertility, and economic drain? Easy because they could. Young
vulnerable unsupported pregnant girls are easy pickings for powerful moral
welfare workers, who have created a socio-system where coercive practice and
bullying is the norm.
And a loving new unmarried mother is a bad immoral selfish girl who loves her
baby too much if she wants to keep it for herself. There was also another
hidden agenda, to keep their power and their jobs in the mainly private
adoption agencies/unmarried mother's homes - they also needed incomes.
Unbeknown to us the state paid these pariahs's of society to take our babies
and to treat us shamefully. They took our benefits, that we were entitled to
and told us when we asked there was none available and our babies would starve
in our care, all to proliferate their baby racket!
Adopted parents were charged vast sums of money by the private and church
adoption agencies, some paying covenants years later.
In 1976 the adoption act was changed so that adult adoptees would have the
right to information concerning their parentage. Natural mothers were not
consulted about the effects that this would have on their lives, as many have
lived a life of deceit and lies forced upon them at the point of adoption; 'go
away and forget it ever happened ' was a common theme amongst the judiciary at
that time.
Imagine living your life being told to go away and forget, you never truly
forget - sometimes you have 'infantile amnesia' a strategy to help you cope,
you live your whole life not knowing whether your child is dead or alive'. A
mother whose child is lost in battle suffers a similar experience, however at
least she has had the chance to rear her child.
Val Woodhouse - son's death.
In May 1998 natural mother's from all over the world attended a conference in
Felixstowe, it was extremely empowering, cathartic and for me a watershed!
Chris Coles language speech.
NPSG has initiated research into past adoption practice, and can confirm that
the law has been broken over and over again. Between 1948/1976 natural
mother's were supposed to have been given the following choices: Foster Care
National Assistance Welfare Support Housing Benefits
For me adoption should be at the end of a very long road, at the end of a very
long pier, at the end of the world, having swallowed a bottle of pills, with a
noose around your neck, after consuming several bottles of spirits.
NPSG has been lobbying Parliament in London for a Public Inquiry into past
adoption practice. We have the support of over a 100 MP's, with Sir Teddy
Taylor leading the cross party Common's delegation. We have delivered many
presentations in Westminster to many MP's and only a handful has displayed
disinterest - mainly adoptive parents.
If adoption is so good why don't we all have our babies adopted? I don't know
a single mother from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, who said; 'take it, it cries to
much, I want a good night out'.
Why do we need an Inquiry?
We were discredited - we became discreditable. We became silent - we need to
speak and be heard. We were disempowered - we need empowerment. We were
de-humanized - we need to regain our dignity. We were
stigmatized/isolated/excluded - we need inclusion.
But most of all we need a Public Inquiry for our daughters, granddaughters -
for like the Jewish Holocaust, if this injustice is never vindicated or
acknowledged, what is to stop society repeating this tragedy against
womankind.
For me there are only two reasons: 1. So that I can hold my head high and
people can stop treating me as a victim as I am a survivor. 2. For my daughter
- for she has lived her life believing that she was unwanted and unloved - and
through this Inquiry she will be able to say - my mother did love/want me -
illegal coercive practices took me from her.
By Pamela E Sharp
Please read...
Halycon Days of Legalised Kidnappings
Baby Racket
