Adoption legislation makes no provision for the needs of birth mothers, a study by the UCC Social Studies Department has found. Published yesterday, the study involved 18 natural mothers aged 27 to 67, from all parts of Ireland. who responded to the survey.
Their shared experience was one of shame, blame, stigma, silence, coercion and isolation because of their pregnancy while still unmarried, the report found.
One woman said that when word had got out that she was unmarried in a maternity ward the other women "walked up and down just to get a look at me".
The study's primary objective was to rediscover the history of the natural parents, "and to reclaim the voice of countless invisible women who, having conceived in socially proscribed circumstances, were silenced and officially concealed from view by relinquishing their children for adoption.
"This particular experience of Irish women has never before been researched from the woman's perspective," the report added.
Only latterly had personal accounts of the natural mothers' experiences begun to emerge, which offered testament to the life-long pain and loss experienced by those women who felt so stigmatised and socially sanctioned that they had no option but to relinquish their children for adoption, the report said.
It added that, under current legislation, no provision whatsoever was made for their needs.
"There is an urgent need for the introduction of legislation which would give natural parents rights to access information about their adopted child and at least allow them, via the provision of a contact register, to record their wish to be regarded as equal partners in the adoption process."
The report said the practical and emotional coping strategies which women employed to get them through, as well as the implications for later growth, continued to serve as powerful reminders of the emotional impact of the experience. It added that these still resonated powerfully in their lives.
Another respondent told the researchers: "Just thinking back over P. If he had died when he was born, it wouldn't have been so bad because time would have healed ... all through the years I don't know, I'd always the feeling that I would see him again."
Yet another respondent who made contact with her son some years after she had given him up for adoption was warned by her mother not to introduce him to the broader family because she would never have any luck if she did. Peculiar to the Irish adoption process in the past, the report added, was the power of the religious orders that ran the mother and baby homes, the American adoptions, and questions of sin and atonement which were significantly present and repeated in the respondents' accounts.
The authors of the report are Dr Mary Wilson of the Applied Social Studies Department of UCC, together with Ms Nuala Lordan, UCC, and Prof Audrey Mullender of the University of Warwick.
