Miranda Divine - Journalist for The Telegraph had this to say:
My response follows and I add that there must be more way to sell newspapers.
My response follows and I add that there must be more way to sell newspapers.
Demonising adoption dishonours its heroes
Miranda Devine – Saturday, December 22, 2012 (11:00pm)
THERE are a few things this government could apologise for. Adoption is not one of them.
Nevertheless, in an exercise as cynical as it is pointless, one of Julia Gillard’s first acts of 2013 will be a formal apology for past adoption practices.
Thus another class of victims is created in Australia.
There is no doubt many of the young unmarried mothers of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, who gave up their babies for adoption, did suffer, and some now feel their children were stolen.
But was adoption really the “horror of our history” that a Senate Committee chaired by Greens MP Rachel Siewert concluded this year?
We are judging the past by the standards of the present, with moral arrogance and conceit.
Who are we to judge that we are superior to our forebears? On evidence such as child abuse and neglect we certainly are not.
The fact is that there was a strong social stigma against unmarried mothers and illegitimate children which didn’t dissipate until the mid-1970s. Like all social stigmas it originated for a reason.
It was to ensure children were brought up in the optimal environment of a nuclear family to become happy, well-adjusted and productive members of the community.
Unmarried mothers were frowned upon because they disrupted the social order. They were mostly children themselves, some as young as 12 and 13. They had brought great shame on themselves and their families, and were often whisked away secretly to maternity homes to see out their pregnancy, and then resume life where they left off.
It is fascinating to watch three ABC documentaries made in 1965, 1970 and 2012, and see how society’s views changed.
The earlier programs show that, technically, girls were free to keep their babies, with a 30-day cooling off period built into adoption papers so they could change their minds. But in practice, they rarely did, because of societal pressures and their own consciences.
“Walking up the street … if anyone notices us they usually stare at us with scorn,” says a young pregnant girl from a maternity home in the 1965 documentary “The Unmarried Mother”.
“No one will ever know I have had the baby,” said another pregnant girl. “Because my family is wonderful to me, I wouldn’t like to hurt them any more.”
There were heartrending stories: “I decided I couldn’t stand not seeing the baby again,” said one young mother. “Matron and sister were very kind and understanding… and brought the baby out and I just sort of stood there for about half an hour and looked. I kept thinking, “Will I or won’t I?”.
“It was such a temptation to say, ‘yes, I’ll keep her’. I looked at her again and she was all small and sort of curly and I thought, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that to her .’ I couldn’t let her know she had a mother who wasn’t married because it might affect her terribly later on…”
What a courageous young girl, putting her baby’s interests ahead of her own happiness.
Our attitude to adoption today forgets that in so many cases the giving up was done out of love. It was a sacrifice. A gift of love by the mother, for her baby and for the strangers who would adopt it.
This is how one mother, who adopted a baby in 1970, describes it, in a beautiful letter to the ABC this February after the Four Corners program, “ Given or taken”.
“I would like to thank his biological mother for her great gift to us,” wrote Michele King.
“… We had been told that we would never have a child… Imagine the pure joy … when we were given this beautiful boy to cherish. He was truly loved and still is. So you see, in a way, we do know his biological mother. She must be very like him. He is now a fine man with his own family… I for one have never forgotten the anguish paid for one mother’s truly beautiful gift to us.”
Those young women who gave up their babies were the heroes of their time.
It is wrong of us now to devalue their gift. To say that it was not a gift but a theft. That poisons the adopted child’s life narrative too. Instead of being loved and cherished by an adoptive family, they are turned into victims, torn from some idyllic alternative upbringing.
What is the point of thinking like this?
In the 1970 documentary, a childless couple arrives at hospital to pick up their adopted baby and the narrator concludes: “If, in six months time, the couple have fulfilled their requirements as responsible parents, this little illegitimate bundle will become legitimised. By adoption this child will escape the handicap of his birth.”
That was the reality of those times.
Today we have banished all stigma, so it is perfectly tolerable for young women to have babies to a variety of feckless men on the taxpayer tab, leaving the children vulnerable to sexual abuse, violence and neglect. This is an epidemic.
Damaged children are growing up and inflicting the same Hobbesian chaos on their own children. That truly is a horror of our history. Will we be apologising for it in 40 years? We should.
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A response to a bully.
by Janice Konstantinidis.
To begin with Miranda, you are full of judgement, judgement of the sanctimonious kind. In the end here, it's the woman who is judged - nothing about the father's until the very end - "feckless men."
This was the first Christmas in just on 46 years that I have felt somewhat at peace about the theft of my child in 1967 by social workers and my father. Then I read your article. I have to realize that we are breeding another generation of conservative, mindless and insensitive people such as yourself. How dare you! What could you know? You presume you can gainsay the decision of the Senate Inquiry. You are becoming a pest with your inept and inappropriate judgments about sensitive matters. Rude and gross in your recent remarks/tweets about gays and "gerbils." You might think of working for a tabloid such as the National Enquirer perhaps. Gutter press is looking very much like your forte.
You seem to think that because something was in the past that it was ipso facto, the only thing that could have been done, more so in your case, that it was the right thing. I am telling you that there are very few things that are ever set in concrete.
You say "That was the reality of those times."
We as a society make the times as they were and as they are. Reality is a very fluid process and certainly open to change, since reality is, as I see it the manifestation of consensus, and in no way an absolute. So when the Senate Inquiry handed down it's conclusions and recommendations this year, it was saying to us that what happened was wrong and that there would be redress. You need to respect this Miranda. It is indeed unfortunate that you see yourself as qualified to pit yourself against this decision. You have no respect for the mothers you judge so harshly.
Did you read Hobbs before you quoted him? "Damaged children are growing up and inflicting the same Hobbesian chaos on their own children."
This is the antitheses of what Hobbs would have argued. You need to understand what you are reading before you quote others. I don't say here that I agree with Hobbs by the way, I am just asking that you read him before you quote him.
Would you also argue that the burning of witches, slavery, female circumcision, the inability of women to vote, the holocaust, the Pope's latest edict on gay marriage etc etc are all okay because of the reality or culture of the times? Do you see the plight of say, the people of Somalia as being something for which they are to blame? Arguably you would have to say yes to all of this, because it would not be in accordance with what a "Devineonian" social construct should look like, which to me, based on your article, would resemble an assembly line of clone like individuals who all did the right thing in the right proportion in the right time.
You say " Today we have banished all stigma, so it is perfectly tolerable for young women to have babies to a variety of feckless men on the taxpayer tab, leaving the children vulnerable to sexual abuse, violence and neglect. This is an epidemic. Damaged children are growing up and inflicting the same Hobbesian chaos on their own children."Damaged children are growing up and inflicting the same Hobbesian chaos on their own children."
Where did you get the notion that it is "Perfectly tolerable" etc etc? How heavily laden with judgement this is. You describe these young women as though they are cats on heat. How about some analysis into why many women and are marginalized? Do you have any answers such that could advance initiatives and programs which might be productive in the decrease of generational poverty, illiteracy and reliance on welfare? Or will you continue to brand and label people who have fallen between the middle class cracks as promiscuous and or feckless. Could you investigate the reasons behind a whole class of our citizens who have become the refuse of a system so geared towards the polarization of the rich and the poor, that we are losing sight of the fact that they are human. Would you care to write and article about the trend to ghettoization of minority populations in our cities and towns. I don't see that you would care to write about any of this, it is far easier for you to take the high ground, blaming and pointing your finger. God forbid, it may even cause you to think for a change.
Let me assure you, that there are very few mothers who would feel glad about the fact that their child was or is being adopted. Some may choose adoption, but it would be presumptuous or incorrect to say they would welcome it.
Let me say, that I believe there is a place in society for adoption, but the Senate Inquiry and the upcoming Federal Apology has never been, and will not be about adoption at this level. It was and will be about calling into question the fact that human beings were forced/coerced at many levels, to give away their own flesh and blood because they lived in an society that was intolerant, judgmental, and so riddled with religious dogma, that it would not see the harm in what they were doing.
I am disgusted and insulted that you would write an article such that was published today. I am grateful to the Prime Minister for her humanity in this area, grateful for her recognition that an apology will help me heal for the wounds inflicted upon me by a society that thought it was okay to give my child up for adoption. I suffered and my child suffered. To say that my child grew up as a happy person because of adoption would be a gross insult, yet you infer this to be the case.
I suggest you write the sports or gardening column, unless you can generate some empathy. If you think what you wrote would get you the the popular vote on a hot Sunday prior to Christmas, then you need think again!
Janice Konstantinidis
December 23http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_Devinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_Devine 2012
