Blame State and society for ill treatment of single mothers
In the past, unmarried mothers were treated badly – first, by the men who got them pregnant; second, by their parents who threw them out of the house; third, by the State which did not support them; and, finally, by the judicial system which failed to protect their Constitutional rights.
Successive governments turned a blind eye to their incarceration. To my knowledge, no TD spoke out on this issue until the 1990s, when institutions like mother and baby homes were no longer in use.
Such concern is hard to take seriously; it is too late to shed tears for them now, when most of these individuals have passed on.
It is interesting to note that unmarried mothers were treated in a similar fashion in most mainland European countries and the UK well up to the 1950s.
Debate around this subject in today’s media fails to reflect the fact that there was no unmarried mothers’ allowance until the 1970s, and these women were not looked on favourably for social housing either.
The only options open for these women if their families did not support them was the mother and baby homes.
The Children’s Allowance up until 1985 was directed solely to support large families and was only given for the second and third child.
Government supports lone parents today to prevent them from living in abject poverty.
Such supports are now looked on as a right. We can see the misery caused when the State fails to provide social housing for those on low incomes.
So society is burying its head in the sand by blaming the Catholic Church for all of the failures in the past, when the State and society themselves failed in their duty to provide adequate supports for these vulnerable women and their children. Nuala Nolan Co Galway