Judgmental bias persists, now cloaked in faux concern
The report failed to convey effectively that society took its lead from the influential, the powerful and the religious, writes Máiría Cahill
AFTER much speculation, and 2,865 pages, it should have been critical to get the tone of the executive summary of the report into mother and baby homes right.
Had it been, it is likely some survivors would have been less inclined to call it a “whitewash”, and the Taoiseach wouldn’t have landed himself in hot water by initially placing emphasis on societal failings.
The main body of the report states, “many files seen by the Commission reflect an implicit, almost automatic assumption that public policy should be in line with the views of the Catholic hierarchy”. The report writers instead, in their summary, chose to place a greater burden of responsibility on the “fathers of the children and their own immediate families”.
This decision, understandably, angered many. It is indisputable that women suffered appalling treatment in general in Ireland by those who peddled gutter gossip, and those who listened. By doctors who refused entry into maternity wards for pregnant women, raped and not raped. Teachers, who didn’t want teenagers with swollen stomachs in their classrooms for fear pregnancy was catching and corrupting.
And, yes, by men who impregnated then abandoned, and parents who felt obliged to hide their daughters away, for fear of the “shame” that would be brought upon them.
So of course, society was complicit, though it is frustrating the report failed to communicate effectively in summation that society took its lead from the influential, the powerful, and those in religion who set themselves up as pillars of piety. Sex was sinful and single-motherhood was shameful, abortion was illegal, as was contraception.
No provision for adoption existed until 1953. The Unmarried Mother’s Allowance was not introduced until 1973, meaning that even if a woman wanted to keep her baby, it was almost impossible to do so.
Who made and influenced those laws?
Taoiseach aside, as he is an innately decent man, there will always be politicians, even today, who routinely stick their noses into the reproductive business of others. Those who craft cruel words, cloaked in concern for “societal breakdown”, and “family units”, and morality, yet refuse to remove obstacles for the mother and baby home children searching for information on their very identities and origin.
What measures have they taken on Direct Provision, or poverty, or the voiceless children with disabilities, or Jesus, Mary and St Joseph, just making it easier for people to live? Such faux concern for “families” wears thin when some of our politicians — in the present moment — believe single or gay parent families are inferior to married mum, dad and child.
So, it is not hard to see how, in Ireland past, pregnant women were not just second-class citizens but labelled “fallen”, “weak willed” and “offenders,” by a State and church which literally put the fear of God into people. So much so that families felt compelled to hide their daughters away. The report itself states: “No country complied with the Catholic teaching on birth control in as dedicated a fashion as Ireland.” It is hard to see the rationale, therefore, for the greater burden of blame apportioned to families, many of whom are still wrestling with guilt.
The report also emphasises that adoptions were not forced, when it is evident from many of the testimonies that at times it was heavily coerced, or information withheld from women which meant they lacked the capacity to give their informed consent. This should have formed part of the report’s summary to validate these experiences. Joe Duffy’s Liveline, whose programmes
last week should be transcribed and put into the National Archives, illustrated this practice through the voices of the people affected more effectively than the report, which cost upwards of €12 million. How did its authors get the presentation so wrong?
There are countless examples in the chapter on “Attitudes” regarding the relationship between church and State, and the power wielded by local county boards in particular, routinely “deferring”
decisions to bishops or priests. “Local authorities appear to have often disregarded government directions, but appear to have deferred to the views of the Sisters in charge of Mother and Baby homes,” the report states.
In 1941, the then Bishop of Cork told the Bessborough Mother Superior “… this inspection must not encroach on your independence as a religious community… ”
The report also includes a disturbing 1943 contemporaneous
note from an inspector, Alice Litster: “That 60 per cent of these children die would seem to show that very little pains are taken to keep them alive, this is borne out by the fact that babies still alive are covered in sores…”
Later inspections found that the babies had “excoriated buttocks”, as their nappies had not been changed frequently. Consequently, the Department of Health asked for the removal of the Mother Superior. The nun went to the bishop. Resistance followed on the part of the religious order. In March 1944, 102 of the 124 babies that year had died.
It quotes a psychiatric social worker, writing in 1960 about the lack of sex education, who refers to the “ill-defined but powerful influence of atmosphere, which in Ireland excludes the subject of marriage from family and school… somewhere in our growing up we should learn the biological facts of reproduction and it is sadly too common in Ireland to find adults who just never did”.
In the first 20 years after Independence, the report notes, there was “little evidence that ministers or politicians had a serious interest in their (unmarried mothers’) welfare”. It also records hostility to adoption legislation from legislators and illustrates a fascinating historical context, both good and bad, kindness and cruelty — so it is frustrating that the commission did not exercise more care to ensure that words chosen in their analysis would not compound hurt.
Perhaps the remit given to them was too wide-ranging; the report spans 76 years, to 1998. Nevertheless, they had six years to write it.
‘That 60pc of these children die shows little effort to keep them alive’