dead Irish babies, maternity homes, thoughts
As I read about the 800 skeletons of Irish children found in a septic tank in Tuam, I keep thinking about my own past. My father's birth mother was Irish. She was seduced by her employer and got pregnant. When it was found out, she was fired. That girl raised her son for two years on her own. I always wondered why, in the middle of the Great Depression, she didn't give my dad up sooner. But she was coming from Ireland--that place of outcast women with illegitimate children. She kept her baby. It was with great reluctance that she finally gave my dad up when he was two--to be fostered by a good Catholic family. She visited him regularly for five years. My dad knew his birth mother and knew she loved him but couldn't keep him. She eventually relinquished him for adoption, and the Fogartys adopted him when he was fifteen.
Which leads me to me . . . Antoinette had me at St. Anne's Home for Unwed Mothers in Los Angeles. She changed her name there, so no one knew who she really was. Now I realize that the nuns told them to change their names. I was taken away from her right after birth and put up for adoption. She knew by entering there, adoption was the only choice. She never knew I spent two weeks there before I was adopted.
Sure, 1960 in Los Angeles wasn't as bad as what was happening in Tuam. And my father's birth mother had to have known about those homes in Ireland, and worse, the Magdeline Laundries. She knew. That's why she kept him as long as she could. It was all about shaming. Shame. What is it about the Catholic culture that was/is so grounded in shame? Why were the women who got pregnant and the innocent children who were born to them the targets of this shame, and not the men? I look at all those poor children in Tuam and other 'Homes' in Ireland, and I feel far too close to their pain. I barely started reading about the atrocities committed to the children of maternity homes in Australia. I had to stop reading because it was too disturbing. I am not very far removed from it.
I found Antoinette when I was 18, and she continues to be my very good friend and a spare grandma to my children. I'm forever grateful to be adopted by the family who adopted me, as my father was adopted by his parents. I'm grateful I wasn't aborted and that I was given life. But I don't understand this society of shame. This mark of bastardy. If any great thing has come out of the societal evolution of the last forty years, it's increased acceptance. The traditional family may be hurting, bastardy might have become so common that it happens more often than not in some areas, but at least the children aren't growing up in shame.
Bastard born and proud of it.
Which leads me to me . . . Antoinette had me at St. Anne's Home for Unwed Mothers in Los Angeles. She changed her name there, so no one knew who she really was. Now I realize that the nuns told them to change their names. I was taken away from her right after birth and put up for adoption. She knew by entering there, adoption was the only choice. She never knew I spent two weeks there before I was adopted.
Sure, 1960 in Los Angeles wasn't as bad as what was happening in Tuam. And my father's birth mother had to have known about those homes in Ireland, and worse, the Magdeline Laundries. She knew. That's why she kept him as long as she could. It was all about shaming. Shame. What is it about the Catholic culture that was/is so grounded in shame? Why were the women who got pregnant and the innocent children who were born to them the targets of this shame, and not the men? I look at all those poor children in Tuam and other 'Homes' in Ireland, and I feel far too close to their pain. I barely started reading about the atrocities committed to the children of maternity homes in Australia. I had to stop reading because it was too disturbing. I am not very far removed from it.
I found Antoinette when I was 18, and she continues to be my very good friend and a spare grandma to my children. I'm forever grateful to be adopted by the family who adopted me, as my father was adopted by his parents. I'm grateful I wasn't aborted and that I was given life. But I don't understand this society of shame. This mark of bastardy. If any great thing has come out of the societal evolution of the last forty years, it's increased acceptance. The traditional family may be hurting, bastardy might have become so common that it happens more often than not in some areas, but at least the children aren't growing up in shame.
Bastard born and proud of it.