APOLOGY TO UNMARRIED MOTHERS: Fashions re adoption, today and in the days of Mary MacKillop.
Yesterday the Western Australian government formally apologised to women whose babies were taken from them from the 1940s to the 1980s because they were unmarried.
All this week the media have printed stories of such women – who describe being handcuffed, drugged, forbidden to hold their baby, forced to sign away their children for adoption etc.
One said, “The trauma is so deep, so complex, that over 40 percent of us never risked having another child. Children have suffered believing their own mothers callously gave them away. Until a trauma is acknowledged and validated it can’t begin to heal.”
WA Minister for Health, Kim Hames, said, “There was an enormous stigma about having a child out of wedlock and those mothers were strongly encouraged, if not coerced, into giving up their babies. When you look back at those practices of the day . . . they were wrong.”
Were they?
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Nobody wants to justify the handcuffing etc.
But was it wrong in principal to adopt out babies of unmarried mothers?
Human history shows that a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman — as in traditional marriage — is the normal way to provide a secure environment for growing children.
Current experience bears this out.
Today in Australia, the marriage break-up rate is bad — 47 percent eventually split. But unmarried couples do even worse. Over 90 percent of de facto couples separate within ten years.
Children of unmarried parents are known to suffer increased risk of child abuse, drug abuse and other bad outcomes.
Marriage is better for everyone — especially children.
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Interestingly, Mother Mary MacKillop had strong views on this.
In an 1882 interview with journalist, Stanley James, she defended her Order running “refuges” for the children of unmarried mothers:
“It is far better that we take these children and bring them up properly, than that their mothers should neglect them and leave them to be reared in misery and vice.”
That’s why Saint Mary of the Cross is a saint.
No, not because she defied bishops– or dobbed in a paedophile.
She was a saint because she adhered to Catholic teachings on all subjects – including marriage and family – whether they were fashionable or not.
.
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And Mary MacKillop also spoke of “those unnatural mothers who give away their children.” For source see “Heeding the Voices” by Sr Antoinette Baldwin, available online, and stop having blind faith in people because they are Catholic.
And the fact that the children of sole mothers do relatively poorly might have something to do with the refusal of those who owe them charity to lend a helping hand. In that regard, you give away your own bigotry and prejudice.
Dr Jago, I find your comments very offensive. You seem to cherry pick comments to support your biased views. The WA Adoption Apology was for women and children for the flawed policies and practices. I certainly appreciated the apology given in the WA Parliament and I look forward to the days when every State gives a similar apology and when this is also given in the National Parliament. Times have changed, but some people don’t seem to have moved with the times.
Dr Jago, I hope the church apologises to the mothers including religious, who relinquished their babies whose fathers were clergymen, coercerd many of them, and not so long ago, as being the “loving thing to do” to preserving the priesthood.
Imagine the empty arms of the mothers and for their babies, no hope as adults, finding their roots or knowing the finer qualities of their natural fathers.
Too sad to contemplate.