A question for first Moms and adoptees?

Believe me when I tell you...that there is not much in this world that can shock, upset and trigger me nowadays...but films like this depicting the wholesale abuse of women...is just even too much for me. I watched just over 35 minutes of this film and that is all I could take. It was too painful and my anger was all consuming. I lost my baby because of religion and societal stigma, I don't need to revisit that pain and anger over and over again. I already did my time in Hell...

Thank you though Linnyg...I hope others will watch this film...just so they can learn how badly vulnerable young women can be used and abused. This film may be of the past...but the pain I feel watching this...is like yesterday. My own mother spent 6 months in a maternity home in Stoke-Newington, England..St. Mary's (Roman Catholic)...my mother never in her life told me of her 6 mo. stay there. 3 mos. while pg with me and for 3 mos. after I was born...back in 1946-1947. My poor Mum....

ETA: Please people don't categorize this as an "adoption horror story" 'as if' this was just an individualized 'adoption horror story'...this was par for the course in all westernized countries after WWII and into the 1970's. This was a global tragedy for so many young pregnant women and their newborn babies. The humiliation, the degradation, the abuses (physical, emotional, and verbal)...that young unmarried pregnant women were forced to endure, is more than what any one film could ever depict or an individual story tell. For any woman...whether natural mother, adoptee, adoptive mother or any woman who has no connection to adoption...you as a woman should be outraged that this happened to your sister women. Your hearts should be filled with compassion.

Remember Women...But for the Grace of God...go I.

ETA: My religion at the time was Lutheran..they too had their own adoption agencies (I'm sure they had their own maternity homes or had agreements with others) and Lutheran nurseries in hospitals where they took the Lutheran babies immediately after surrender, then placed in Foster Care until the agency called the PAPs next in line on their list. I would learn of these details/practices about 5 years ago...from of all places/people...The Cradle in Evanston, IL. I lost my religion totally after the loss of my newborn to adoption and I was raised in the church and attended a Lutheran grammar school. There is still remnants of that 'programming' within me..sorry to say. My mother (a young widow with 6 children)couldn't afford the cost of a maternity home), but didn't matter, it all ended up the same way....no baby to come home with her own mother.

My mother has never talked about where she lived when she was pregnant with me. I know from the other people involved who have talked about it that she lived in a home run by the agency. I guess I've actually always known that. They no longer keep the girls there, but during my childhood, I visited many times when the girls were still housed there. I never saw them. They were kept completely out of the public eye. I know that her parents had to pay for her to live there, and I know she was required to do 'chores' while she was there. The agency was not Catholic, but the hospital where all the girls were sent to deliver was a private Catholic hospital. The only part of this my mother has ever spoken about is the labor and delivery--especially the episiotomy. She said it was so horrible that she never wanted to have children again, and she didn't.

Wow, yes a baby has an awareness and feelings that are too easily dismissed. I would recommend a book entitled 'The Secret Life of the Unborn Child' As a mother of three I can confirm there IS an amazing bond between a mother and the child she is carrying. I really hope your Mom comes out of the stigma and shame of yesteryear and can embrace the present day, without secrets, guilt or shame. Hugs

Linney, I'm Irish and adopted, I saw this and it made me sick, but I'm 17 and know for a fact that there were no laundries when I was born. If you can remember a question I asked a while ago where I speculated that my birth mother may have been on drugs and got a lot stick of for assuming this. But Ireland is such a small country and with government aid it is next-to impossible to be unable to raise a child lest you are utterly incapable. Probably should have cleared that up in my Q. Anyway I'm sorry but I don't know much about adoption in the states but I'm sure it happened, single parent-hood being socially acceptable is a relatively new thing I know many stories of "girls in trouble" being "sent away" only to be brought back ah...nine months later and this appeared to be Universal in Western countries up to even 30 years ago.

I have a lot of first mom friends who were in Catholic homes and they were treated horribly - very similarly to this. I was in a Booth Home in Pittsburgh owned by the Salvation Army which is considered non-denominational and at least they didn't use religion against us; but it was pretty degrading.

We were made to earn our keep by doing "chores'" and I remember the horrible disinfectant smell of the bathrooms that we had to scrub on our knees. One of the girls at my home and I became close friends and roommates after we lost our babies. It's strange, we never talked about losing our babies until years later - we were so raw with pain. But we still felt so degraded by the attitude they had toward us of being bad girls and often mentioned how thankful we were to be out of that place.

I've been in support groups since the mid 1980's and almost every mom I've spoken to that was sent to an unwed mother's home shared similar stories of abuse; but always the girls in Catholic homes seemed to have it much worse than the rest of us.

Thank you for posting this. Sorry, but i thankfully don't have a adoption horror stories. But there is a good chance that i will someday. My father was born in the BSE and there is a very good chance my grandmother went through something like this. All in the name of God. I can't know this for certain, not until i find her if i ever do.

EDIT: Sorry, i wasn't trying to imply that this was an individual thing, that only happened to one or few people and was rare. I am very aware that this happened to hundreds of thousands if not millions of women around the world. I was just pointing out that i don't know my family history, i don't know what happened to my grandmother. What her reason was for placing my father. Being someone who was unwed when i became pregnant with my son, i am very thankful we no longer live in that time period. Otherwise i might not be holding my son today. Its important for these stories to be told, so history does not repeat itself. I hope that my Grandmother didn't go through this but if she did i plan to support her in anyway i can and share her story if she will let me. This should have never happened to anyone.

I am not able to watch the movie, Linny, because I have dialup, but, I think I am glad I cannot. I saw the Magdalene Laundries and sobbed through the whole thing, and had flashbacks for days after watching it. I don't really have to see the movie, since I remember it all very well.

And, no, it was NOT just in Great Britain and not just in the Catholic Charities homes, either. In fact, one mother I got to know who was in a CC Home said that the big threat that they gave to the women in the home where she was incarcerated was that they would be sent to the Salvation Army Home....Hello! I was THERE....I was in a Salvation Army Home in St. Louis MO. I don't even like to think about it.

I was not ever very religious, but could not ever again be involved in any church that allowed young women to be so abused, and that is pretty much all of them. I have never missed it.

After 43 years you would think that the triggers would be done, the pain would be abated, the sadness would have left, but it all comes crashing back from time to time.

Is it any wonder we wish for justice for the things that happened to the women who were so sorely used and abused?

My first mum was sent to a home for unwed mothers, owned by the Catholic Church by her parents. So that she couldnt escape she was given only two dresses to wear, and no shoes. She was worked like a slave, with no money and beaten if she complained. I was taken from her at birth and sent to a different hospital without my mothers knowledge. It was only after she refused to sign the relinquishment papers that they made a deal with her, two hours holding me, but only if she signed. That was the only contact she had with me for 34 years. It was Australia in 1968.

I just watched the whole movie. I went to some kind of home, but refused to stay. My mother took me home. I have often wondered what fate i escaped by being pig headed. So I have no personal story for you. Can't honestly say I'm sorry either.

I wasn't incarcarated in a maternity home, but instead in a private wage home. But my hospital experience giving birth was just as bad as any of those movies. They tied down mothers with leather straps on their arms, on flat delivery tables, drugged them so they were delirious, cut them open w/o anaesthesia (episiotomy was cut deep and long and in a way that "marked" the mother after and caused permanentnerve damage) and whisked the baby out of the room to prevent the mother from seeing her child. Of course she was given no choice but to sign papers -- they threatened foster care unless you signed and said your child would grow up to be a criminal and there was no welfare for single mothers or they said there was none. This was in small-town Canada in the 1980s. There was no choice. It was abduction.