Taking the road less travelled

WHETHER as a source of moral concern, financial begrudgery or political own goals, single mothers just won't go away. As Cherish, the association of single parent families, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, you would think that women rearing children outside marriage would have become a seamless part of Irish society.

Not so. There is still the perception that young girls deliberately become pregnant for status, a State allowance and a flat. But the facts don't back up such notions: the 37,506 women receiving an unmarried mother's payment in December 1996 represented just three per cent of social welfare payments overall and the average length of time women stay on payments is 3 years.

While there is legitimate concern about children reared in vulnerable situations, even speaking out on their behalf can backfire. In March 1996, Dublin South East Fianna Fail TD Eoin Ryan worried aloud at the lack of opportunities for some single mothers. "I said that once they have a child it can be difficult to get education or training and to get on with their life," he says.

"I was attacked. If you open your mouth about single mothers these days it is seen as being against them." Similarly Mary Harney's pre-election suggestion that young single mothers should be encouraged to stay at home through financial incentives was widely regarded as an attempt to lock families into unwanted togetherness.

There seems to be no reasoned, middle ground in which to conduct the debate. But at least we're debating. It was all so different 25 years ago when single mothers didn't officially exist. There was no mother and child allowance, childcare was scant, and public scandal or private policy meant that most pregnant single women had to leave work or leave town or both.

Keeping a child in such a climate took great courage. Here they tell it like it was.

- Evelyn Forde

TWENTY-five years ago when Evelyn Forde discovered she was pregnant she felt she had no option but to have the baby adopted: "You're programmed. You can't see you can do anything else. I had fallen madly, stupidly in love - but there could be no question of marriage." Aged 27, working in a semi-state body, she shared a flat in Dublin with three other single girls but could not confide in them.

The pregnancy was shrouded in secrecy and frantic planning as she tried to hide her symptoms and make arrangements for the future. She told her sister, but their elderly parents in Mayo were unaware of the drama unfolding in Dublin. "I was lucky with clothes. Smocks and bell bottoms were the fashion; I let out some seams and held my tummy in. Nobody knew."

Even so, Dublin was becoming a dangerous city: "The adoption society had only one waiting room so you could meet your neighbour there applying to adopt a child." She spent much of her pregnancy in denial: "I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I would lie on the sofa at night worrying would I get, found out. I didn't think about the baby. You put your feelings on ice.

She registered in a rural hospital under an assumed name. "Having the baby was absolutely wonderful. I didn't know that birth could be so exciting, and far from him being dependent on me, I was instantly dependent emotionally on this tiny scrap of humanity. Everything that could be tugged and pulled was tugged and pulled. I was hooked."

She left her child in foster care and returned to Dublin and her job alone: "I needed time and space to think. My son joined me within two months but we had seven or eight moves in the first few months, not good for a young baby."

Evelyn looked for and received sporadic maintenance from her son's father: "I feel that a father should contribute something no matter how small, not only for the child's self esteem but also to acknowledge responsibility. To know your father helps to support you shows that he does care."

Evelyn joined Cherish and gradually began to introduce her son. "Socially, you were not allowed be an ordinary mother, you were either wonderwoman, a bad woman or a bit of an exhibit in the zoo. Also, some men felt as a single mother you were easy.

"Going home was difficult at first. One relative crossed the road to avoid me and we didn't tell my father. He called unexpectedly in Dublin when my son was eight months old and I had to pretend it was someone else's child, it was heart-breaking to see them getting on so well together. But when he was told later he took it in his stride."

When her son was 14 Evelyn married, and she says now it is a special man who defies convention to take on a ready-made family. She hoped to have more children, but it didn't happen. Her son is currently a student. She adds: "My only regret is being parted from him for two months after he was born and, for his sake, that he has no relationship with his father."

- Maura O'Dea

IN 1970, when Cherish founder-member Maura O'Dea discovered she was pregnant, she was 30, single, working as a financial controller in Dublin with a lovely flat and her own car. "I met a man and fell passionately in love. Sleeping with him may have gone against the prescribed sexual norms but at the time it was the natural thing to do.

When I sensed I was pregnant I was terrified. Thinking back now I become angry. What a ridiculous, pathetic state to be in. What kind of society did it suggest we had and how had I imbibed It so deeply?

"I brought a sample to the doctor in my handbag, in a bottle wrapped in brown paper. When I came in the door, he said: "You can take the bottle out now he knew from the look on my face what had happened. He told me to go home and smoke 20 fags and that everything would be all right But he proved to be a wonderful support.

"From the very beginning I was against adoption. There was no question of my giving a child of mine for someone else to rear. As the pregnancy progressed it became a secret delight and to have lost the baby would have been a tragedy."

But telling people was not an option. "I had never been in time for work in my life. Suddenly I was in at half-eight in the morning behind the desk so that nobody could see me, or walking around with a basket of files in front of me." And despite a caring landlady, she had to find somewhere new to live and bought a caravan in a field in Templeogue.

Maura took sick leave and her daughter Carol was born on cue: "It was wonderful, incredible, there she was pure joy undiluted with no worries for the future. I had pulled it off, it was bloody marvellous. The nurses made remarks about the lack of a ring on my finger but I didn't mind."

Carol was minded by a friend by day and four months later Maura changed jobs. "At the interview I was totally open about my situation and they had no problem. It was a great relief; I realised I had been hiding and denying a huge part of myself.

"I didn't start Cherish, Cherish started itself. I was asked to meet a mother who couldn't keep her baby and she introduced me to other women who had been in mother and baby homes. We began to get together and Cherish started in my house in Kimmage.

"The election of 1973 was coming up. We knew we could sit forever in Kimmage talking, or we could do something. We lobbied TDs and got an allowance of Pounds 8.10 a week

"Twenty five years later things are better. Women always rear children. Unmarried women used to do it by the grace of God and virtue of their own determination. Now there's a lot more support."

In 1977 Maura met and married English psychologist Graham Richards and moved to London with then six-year-old Carol. "We handled the move badly for Carol, and with hindsight, made a lot of mistakes, though I think she's forgiven me. I've no regrets about having my daughter except perhaps I would like to have been a better parent. But I suppose every mother in the world will say that."

- Carol O'Dea

CAROL O'Dea is 26 and works Vas a legal secretary in London. "I remember my childhood in Dublin very well. The house was always very busy, full of big and small people. I was wherever my mother was, so at meetings I would be colouring in the Cherish office; there were loads of toys.

"I had no problem at school in Ireland, but primary school in England was dreadful. I was Irish, different, visible. They called me bastard. I was in trouble and fights constantly. My mum was brilliant, always in my corner. She gave me heaps of self esteem but the fact that my father never bothered to see or know me has become an issue over the years. I tell myself it doesn't matter, but it does. My mother never bad-mouthed him to me. She said he is not a nasty person but he couldn't face the consequences of his actions.

"There were problems when mum married Graham. I was jealous. I had had her to myself and I was very possessive. It was difficult, I think he would acknowledge that also, and we had had to work it through.

"In my late teens I became very curious about whom I was, to find any half brothers or sisters. I made an unsuccessful effort to find my father. Even though I've never known him, I feel rejected by him. Why did he not want to know what I am like? It is a deep wound, and there have been long- term consequences. I find it very hard to trust people and, while in general terms my self-esteem is quite high, when it comes to men and relationships, I think it is quite low. As for myself and my mum, we re incredibly close."

- Grainne Farren

IN 1968 Grainne Farren was living in Paris. She had saved her earnings, resigned from her job as a bilingual secretary and had started to write the great Irish novel, when fate took a hand. She got pregnant during a brief affair with a charismatic Italian.

He wanted me to have an abortion which was still illegal in France. I could not agree. Contraception was theoretically available but I didn't know about getting the pill and had mixed feelings. I was into spontaneity rather than being deliberate.

My response to pregnancy was total panic and disbelief, though I never considered adoption. There may have been an unconscious feeling that this could be my only chance to have a child." The novel was shelved, she got well paid work as a translator and began to save.

Grainne is the eldest of five children. Telling her news to the family at home was difficult, and she says her mother struggled with it for a long time while her father was more immediately accepting: "When I came home first after Owen was born, I couldn't go home. I stayed with a friend and the family came to see me there. It was because my mother didn't want anyone to know, though in time she did accept and love her first grandson.

Back in Paris news of her pregnancy drew general support from friends. Officially, a woman could not be sacked for becoming pregnant, there was maternity leave, free milk and a special allowance for breast-feeding mothers.

After Owen was born and thoughts of writing the book were gradually abandoned: "He took up the whole day!" she says. Returning to work meant childcare, more advanced in France than in Ireland today. A registered childminder cared for Owen, and he subsequently went to a creche.

Life settled into a pattern: As time went on I realised I could support myself and my child, though it was sometimes tight. I had a few relationships but never met anyone to tempt me into marriage.

She became involved in the women's movement in France and co-founded The Group of Single Mothers who met for friendship, information and support. On visits home she had made contact with Cherish and when Owen was 12, they returned to live here. "Ireland in 1980 was not as advanced as I had expected. While I experienced no personal stigma, I felt women here struggled with battles that had been won elsewhere."

Leaving the world he knew was, she says, very difficult for a 12-year- old. "Owen spoke English with a French accent. At school he was called Frenchy and Froggy.

One of the ways he coped was to become the class clown. But within six months he had lost any French intonation, Owen is very adaptable."

Grainne, who was the chairwoman of Cherish for some years. now works as a freelance copy editor and proof reader.

Looking back she has no regrets about choosing motherhood: "I don't think Owen lost out from not having a father. We are very close and when he went away to work after he left school I missed him terribly."

- Owen Farren

OWEN Farren is 28 and lives in Galway. He is interested in theatre and drama, and works part-time as a musician and in theatre lighting. He appears bemused at questions regarding his origins, recalling that his only sense of being different from the norm came from other people's curiosity, and he doesn't feel any lack of a father: "How could I? I was getting so much attention from one person. It was the way it was.

The return to Ireland at age 12 was a pivotal experience and he says initially differences in language and culture made deep friendships difficult: "But now I would call myself Irish and Ireland is my home."

Asked to describe his mother there is a long pause: "What can I say? You come from mother, it is a deep core relationship. If I had to use one word to describe her, it would be giving."