The
pain of giving up a baby for adoption is still raw for some mothers
50 years later, as a fascinating two-part documentary showed.
Love
Child, was shown on ITV over two successive Sundays in January
and was made by Testimony Films, Steve Humphries’ Bristol-based
company renowned for producing oral history programmes.
In
the 1950s and 1960s, the stigma of illegitimacy was such that
many young women in their late teens and early 20s were more or
less forced to give up their babies. They were expected to go
away to mother and baby homes, and six weeks later, sign over
their child to someone else. They were then expected to make a
fresh start and forget the babies they gave away.
But
the women featured in the programme didn’t forget. Every
day, each one of them thought about the babies society wouldn’t
let them keep. Some of the stories were heart-wrenching. Doreen,
who went to tell her Navy boyfriend she was pregnant only to find
he was already married with a family, refused point blank to sign
the forms so her son Michael could be adopted. She vividly described
throwing the pen across the room as officials tried to force her.
Only when she was threatened with being sent to a mental institution
did she finally give in.
Parental
pressure during the post-war era was a tremendous influence too.
Girls who got pregnant were seen to have brought shame on the
family. The men involved didn’t come into it at all. Many
of these women were ‘sent away’ to mother and baby
homes for the duration of the pregnancy and birth, only being
allowed home when the baby had been adopted.
The
messages were repeated over and over. Young pregnant women were
told that adoption would give their baby both a mother and a father
and a home full of nice things – things that they wouldn’t
be able to do. With little or no support from family or state,
it was virtually impossible for a young woman with a baby to support
herself financially, or find suitable accommodation.
The
women who gave their babies away came across as tortured souls.
Most of them were now in their 60s and 70s, but all had vivid
recollections of the precious moments they were allowed to spend
with their babies before they were adopted.
Though
Liz knew that her baby daughter was going to be adopted, she remained
heartbroken at not being allowed to say goodbye to her. Her daughter
was taken from her cot by the nuns at the mother and baby home
as she slept. Liz’s shock at the deviousness of this act
was still palpable. Yet this was one of the stories with a happy
ending. Though she went on to marry and have seven sons, Liz never
forgot her daughter, praying that one day she would try and find
her. That moment came when her daughter had a child of her own.
“I
had to find out why it happened, why anyone could give up something
as precious as the baby I had before me,” she said.
Liz
and her daughter – who emigrated to Australia as a child
– were happily reunited 34 years later. But not all reunions
ended so well. Many mothers were desperate to find out what had
happened to their children but it wasn’t until the Children
Act of 1975 that children were given the right to search for their
birth parents. The birth parents had to hope that their child
would choose to get in touch.
The
programme focused on two women who were desperate to know more
about their birth mothers – both stories ended in heartache
as their mothers were found, but chose to get in touch with their
daughters only to tell them they didn’t want any contact.
TV
antiques expert David Dickinson did manage to trace his birth
mother, exchanging regular letters, photographs and phone calls.
But they never did meet.
“My mother was always a little wary if I suggested I flew
over to Jersey, where she lived. I would have loved to have gone
over there but I sensed her reluctance, a feeling that I would
disrupt her life. I didn’t want to do that but we remained
in close contact, nevertheless,” he said.
The
programme offered a moving insight into the experiences of these
mothers and their children. It told us as much about the social
and sexual upheavals of the last 50 years as it did about our
basic human need – to know where we came from.
Though
Love Child made thought-provoking television, the spin-off book
that accompanies it offers much greater insight into the whole
history of adoption in this country. The book, also called Love
Child: A Memoir of Adoption, Reunion, Loss and Love by Sue Elliott
(Vermilion, £14.99) chronicles the process from before the
first Adoption of Children Act in 1926 upto the present day. Elliott,
the author, also has her own story to tell – she was adopted
as a baby in 1951 and her own experiences pepper this informative
work.
