Men and the mother and baby homes

mariaalice

I am wonder what thought do you have on men and the mother and baby homes.

The church gets talked about.

The woman gets talked about.

Society at the time gets mentioned.

You rarely hear from the men and as it takes two to get pregnant for every mother and baby in the homes there must have been a man who got the mother pregnant.

That means there were and are thousand men out there maybe old now, who either raped the woman, abandon them after sex or after a relationship, felt the woman were repugnant to them because they were willing to have sex with them before marriage as was the convention of the time and let them go in to mother and baby homes because they were seen as somehow not chase. The men's lives were never ruined they went on to married more respectable or suitable women, Not all men of course theire were some I am sure who were devastated by what happened but most did not seem to care.

eviltwin

That wasn't always the case, a friend of mine was born in a mother and baby home. Her parents were young, unmarried and she was sent to the home to have her child, the couple and the maternal grandparents wanted them to get married but his parents wouldn't allow them, they did eventually get married and went onto have 3 other children.

mariaalice

I am sure that did happen but not for the majority of the women they were simply abandoned by the men society.

_Whimsical_

I would think that back when pregnancy outside of marriage was considered a great shame or sin that women were dispatched off to these homes and if possible no one from their locality,including the father,would know anything about them being pregnant. They'd just disappear off to "help an elderly relative" or to a "great job in the city" etc. I'm sure there were boys and men who lost girlfriends and never knew why they suddenly disappeared.

That said in cases where young girls got pregnant I would imagine given the climate that it might often have been the result of abuse and rape and that those men too went on happily oblivious to the grave circumstances their actions set in motion for two innocent people.

I think as well as the religious environment of the time the societal attitude to women and status of women was also responsible for the terrible things that happened.

iptba

mariaalice wrote: »

That means there were and are thousand men out there maybe old now, who either raped the woman, abandon them after sex or after a relationship, felt the woman were repugnant to them because they were willing to have sex with them before marriage as was the convention of the time and let them go in to mother and baby homes because they were seen as somehow not chase. The men's lives were never ruined they went on to married more respectable or suitable women, Not all men of course theire were some I am sure who were devastated by what happened but most did not seem to care.

It's an interesting point.

However, there are other scenarios e.g. a male in education (secondary or tertiary) would not be in any sort of position to provide sufficient support for a family.

Also, a woman's life wasn't necessarily ruined - once a child was given up for adoption, women generally left such homes as I understand it.

But an interesting issue.

But for a bit of perspective on what happened then, quite a lot of married men then saw very little of their families, working away from home e.g. in England, as there wasn't enough employment for everyone.

Fukuyama

I think it was all brushed under the rug. A mans name would have been the family name I guess, so the women were shut away and the men got off scot free.

Obviously I'd say there were cases when the man wanted to be involved or a couple were in love etc... But from what little I know on the subject it was mostly the case of women being abandoned by their own families.

Fukuyama

iptba wrote: »

It's an interesting point.

However, there are other scenarios e.g. a male in education (secondary or tertiary) would not be in any sort of position to provide sufficient support for a family.

Also, a woman's life wasn't necessarily ruined - once a child was given up for adoption, women generally left such homes as I understand it.

But an interesting issue.

But for a bit of perspective on what happened then, quite a lot of married men then saw very little of their families, working away from home e.g. in England, as there wasn't enough employment for everyone.

I've never actually even considered that. A lot of boys would have left school very young and been told to go to England or the US. Either it was a thought process of going abroad to earn money to raise a family or to do a runner after getting someone knocked up.

If the man couldn't afford to keep the woman and child it might have been thought "best" that she be shipped off to a state/church home. Sad times.

No Pants

Don't forget that back in those days and until quite recently, in my lifetime certainly, children were taken care of by women. If a mother died, it wasn't unusual for the children to be "redistributed" amongst relatives rather than be left with the new widower.

_Brian

iptba wrote: »

Also, a woman's life wasn't necessarily ruined - once a child was given up for adoption, women generally left such homes as I understand it.
.

Oh my god your making it sound like they had a tooth out and went right back to their lives in an afternoon..

Near all were forced by their families into these "institutions". Their name was taken from them and they were given different names for the duration of their stay.. This was to dehumanise them and destroy their sense of identity.

For the most the child wasn't "given up" for adoption, many had their child taken from them without consent or prior knowledge when it would happen.. Most had ni idea that this wasn't compulsory by the state.

Many were shipped off to the laundries for years to repay their debt to the nuns and society, when in fact the nuns were paid per head by the state already..

It would be well if you read a bit about the actual workings of these places, listened to some of the testimony of former occupants, before making such light inaccurate statements..

iptba

_Brian wrote: »

Many were shipped off to the laundries for years to repay their debt to the nuns and society, when in fact the nuns were paid per head by the state already..

And many weren't.

_Brian wrote:

iptba wrote:

Also, a woman's life wasn't necessarily ruined - once a child was given up for adoption, women generally left such homes as I understand it.

.
Oh my god your making it sound like they had a tooth out and went right back to their lives in an afternoon..

I was pointing out that different people spent different lengths of time there as some people may not be aware of this. "Giving up a child for adoption" is I believe the normal verb that is used.

I said a woman's life wasn't necessarily ruined, responding to the language used in the OP, not that it wasn't a difficult experience.

But I suppose some people in the population don't understand such subtleties, or alternatively choose to ignore them to take cheap shots at people.

I know somebody, who was in a mother and baby home, who gave up their child for adoption after two weeks, and then went back to their job. They went on and got married and had children she didn't have to give up for adoption.

Fukuyama

_Brian wrote: »

Oh my god your making it sound like they had a tooth out and went right back to their lives in an afternoon..

Near all were forced by their families into these "institutions". Their name was taken from them and they were given different names for the duration of their stay.. This was to dehumanise them and destroy their sense of identity.

For the most the child wasn't "given up" for adoption, many had their child taken from them without consent or prior knowledge when it would happen.. Most had ni idea that this wasn't compulsory by the state.

Many were shipped off to the laundries for years to repay their debt to the nuns and society, when in fact the nuns were paid per head by the state already..

It would be well if you read a bit about the actual workings of these places, listened to some of the testimony of former occupants, before making such light inaccurate statements..

No need to jump down their throat.

I think everyone on Ireland is aware of what church/state institutions from industrial schools to laundries did. But not everyone that passed through their doors spent their entire lives locked up. Most were for a period of months - again this doesn't make it right I'm just saying that the OP was right in that not everyone had their entire lives stolen from them.

It was often only in extreme circumstances (not that it makes it right) or where the women couldn't re-enter normal society because their community and family had banished them.

The homes, laundries and industrial schools should be studied, investigated and talked about. Not used as a weapon to beat this generation over the head.

GalwayGuy2

I am sure that did happen but not for the majority of the women they were simply abandoned by the men society.

Guess what?

Half of society is made up of women :eek:

Many of those women had mothers, aunts, and sisters that abandoned them.

Correct me if I'm wrong but many of these places were run by nuns, and I don't think nuns were men?

Lets try not to turn another horrible event into a blame game.

Banjoxed

There is a wider issue of why Ireland had a culture of confinement, ranging from Mother and Baby homes through Magdalen Laundries and lunatic asylums. As my mother recently said to me, Ireland in the forties had a tiny number of wealthy people who ran the place, while everyone else had to scramble for the crumbs off their plate, so to speak. With a State whose hallmark was the reduction in the Old Age Pension on independence, creating a climate of fear around deviation from a tight set of norms makes evil sense.

mariaalice

I am not the women were let down by everyone, but we rarely here from the men involved and its an interesting point how the men were able to live with the double standards of having sex with the women yet often abandoning them( not all men) or even felling shame that they has sex with the woman and letting the church or the woman families sort it out for them while they moved on with their lives. I was listing to a woman on the radio a few weeks a ago talking about it and the man literally told her to go away he did not want anything to do with her again.

Fukuyama

mariaalice wrote: »

I am sure that did happen but not for the majority of the women they were simply abandoned by the men society.

Women can be much more cruel and vindictive than men - particularly in family matters such as unexpected pregnancies.

I've heard pure vitriol come out of women's mouths about other people and certain matters to a point where all I could do was sit in silence, stunned. Of course such instances are rare but you'd be surprised the opinions people hold in the dark recesses of their minds. They only come out when they're really tested. Family funerals were always a weird time for me when I was young. I distinctly recall sitting in the corner of pubs at wakes/christenings overhearing hushed conversations about so and so... bearing in mind I was a 'kid' in the 1990s, not the 50s!

I wasn't alive when this happened, but my aunt (mother's side) got pregnant around the late 1970s while she was living in England (around 20 y/o at the time). She came home on the boat with the baby for help and was told to get out of the house by my grandmother, before my grandfather even got home from work. He had no idea she had had a child or was back in Ireland.

It was even kept a secret from him for a while because my grandmother suspected he'd go and find her before she returned to Liverpool.

Men and women were as equally cold and callous about certain things.

iptba

An unplanned pregnancy often led to marriage - I'm not sure the percentage - so certainly in some cases men did take responsibility.

Fukuyama

mariaalice wrote: »

I am not the women were let down by everyone, but we rarely here from the men involved and its an interesting point how the men were able to live with the double standards of having sex with the women yet often abandoning them( not all men) or even felling shame that they has sex with the woman and letting the church or the woman families sort it out for them while they moved on with their lives. I was listing to a woman on the radio a few weeks a ago talking about it and the man literally told her to go away he did not want anything to do with her again.

I really think you're framing this wrongly and are asking men to atone for an active part that they DIDN'T play.

Some men participated the homes/laundries - either by turning a blind eye or by offering support services that the nuns couldn't do. However are you asking that we hunt down the brick layers that built the home? Or the boyfriends who abandoned the women? Or the women's fathers? Or their teachers? Or their friends?

This was a societal issue.

Plenty of females had a hand in the running of industrial schools either as nurses, administrative, cleaning etc... Yet nobody claims that 'women' were to blame.

mariaalice

iptba wrote: »

An unplanned pregnancy often led to marriage - I'm not sure the percentage - so certainly in some cases men did take responsibility.

Absolutely true lots of men did marry the women or tried their best to help.

mariaalice

Dean0088 wrote: »

I really think you're framing this wrongly and are asking men to atone for an active part that they DIDN'T play.

Some men participated the homes/laundries - either by turning a blind eye or by offering support services that the nuns couldn't do. However are you asking that we hunt down the brick layers that built the home? Or the boyfriends who abandoned the women? Or the women's fathers? Or their teachers? Or their friends?

This was a societal issue.

Plenty of females had a hand in the running of industrial schools either as nurses, administrative, cleaning etc... Yet nobody claims that 'women' were to blame.

Its not blaming the men its for more complicated that that, but there was still the double standard of how women were viewed and how it was often seen as the man life or job or what ever been ruined if he was made marry the woman.

As time went by did the men every reflect on what they did or didn't do at the time did many men try and contact their children again or did they just move on an forget the whole situation.

Fukuyama

mariaalice wrote: »

Its not blaming the men its for more complicated that that, but there was still the double standard of how women were viewed and how it was often seen as the man life or job or what ever been ruined if he was made marry the woman.

As time went by did the men every reflect on what they did or didn't do at the time did many men try and contact their children again or did they just move on an forget the whole situation.

I don't think anyone will deny a double standard existed. And I don't know a single man who, in this day and age, wouldn't stand up and take responsibility for a child they gave a woman. Obviously these men exist, but most do make an effort.

Some men might get a girl pregnant and run out of cowardice. But it'd take a psychopath not to feel remorse if the woman got imprisoned. Whether or not he'd be man enough to come back is a question of character, not genitalia.

Unfortunately, when society tells people that they can get away scott free or that their immoral actions are okay, they do it. That was the case in the 1950s. But it isn't a male thing and to blame males for a human flaw is either ignorant or sexist.

I know it's typical to bring up the holocaust in online discussions, but there wasn't exactly a big push from German women to save the Jews because German women got to occupy the nice homes left behind by the Jews, and were not directly a target. Plsu their children didn't have to sit in school with 'lesser' Jewish children. It's great in hindsight to think everyone would become a freedom loving Nazi killer but we wouldn't. Just the same as men, women, brothers, daughters, aunts and uncles all played an equal part in sending pregnant women to these homes.

I'm sure there are loads of cases of men turning up on women's doorsteps saying "I'm your dad". I'm sure there's many more where they don't. However, is it because men are evil? Because the woman's family told him if he ever shows his face around he'll be killed? Or because his own family said "You're lucky. You're a man. Just feck off to England or deny it's yours"?. I'd say it's a combination and each one couldn't be accurately applied to 'men'.

mariaalice

It not about blaming men nor were they evil, they come our of it as weak more that anything. It is striking how their voices are not often heard in all this.

eviltwin

I think a lot of people probably felt these homes were the least worst option. My aunt was a nun in St Patricks and she always felt these homes were ultimately good for the women despite the stories from former inmates, they got to have their babies and go back into the world and live respectable lives.

There wasn't the same understanding of the bond between a birth mother and her baby or the emotional trauma mothers went through giving up their babies, even today certain groups mention adoption like its an easy thing to do so imagine what it was like 30+ yrs ago. Men didn't have the knowledge men today have, pregnancy and babies were an alien concept to them, I'm sure many were naive and thought women went in, had a child, went home and it was all forgotten about.

I'm sure and I hope any man who was to find out his girlfriend was kept in those homes for years must feel like total crap.

diveout

Dean0088 wrote: »

Women can be much more cruel and vindictive than men - particularly in family matters such as unexpected pregnancies.

I've heard pure vitriol come out of women's mouths about other people and certain matters to a point where all I could do was sit in silence, stunned. Of course such instances are rare but you'd be surprised the opinions people hold in the dark recesses of their minds. They only come out when they're really tested. Family funerals were always a weird time for me when I was young. I distinctly recall sitting in the corner of pubs at wakes/christenings overhearing hushed conversations about so and so... bearing in mind I was a 'kid' in the 1990s, not the 50s!

I wasn't alive when this happened, but my aunt (mother's side) got pregnant around the late 1970s while she was living in England (around 20 y/o at the time). She came home on the boat with the baby for help and was told to get out of the house by my grandmother, before my grandfather even got home from work. He had no idea she had had a child or was back in Ireland.

It was even kept a secret from him for a while because my grandmother suspected he'd go and find her before she returned to Liverpool.

Men and women were as equally cold and callous about certain things.

My grandmother refused to meet any of my uncles girlfriends until they were married. It was like they didn't matter, they were invisible unimportant things, until they were married.

So back in the day, yes I could imagine her or women like her would have thrown their daughters to the wolves. We are all scapegoating the nuns, and yes they are primarily accountable definitely but they didn't do it alone.

Interesting letter to the editor in today's IT.

http://www.irishtimes.com/debate/letters/mother-and-baby-homes-1.1823744

diveout

eviltwin wrote: »

I think a lot of people probably felt these homes were the least worst option. My aunt was a nun in St Patricks and she always felt these homes were ultimately good for the women despite the stories from former inmates, they got to have their babies and go back into the world and live respectable lives.

There wasn't the same understanding of the bond between a birth mother and her baby or the emotional trauma mothers went through giving up their babies, even today certain groups mention adoption like its an easy thing to do so imagine what it was like 30+ yrs ago. Men didn't have the knowledge men today have, pregnancy and babies were an alien concept to them, I'm sure many were naive and thought women went in, had a child, went home and it was all forgotten about.

I'm sure and I hope any man who was to find out his girlfriend was kept in those homes for years must feel like total crap.

Well denial has always been an essential function of social eugenics. They all tell themselves what they are doing is good.

Adoption is also quite a different process to imprisonment and kidnapping. And forced labor.

As for the men... who knows. How responsible are you for what you don't know? It's easy to be callous and selfish when you are young. Maybe some were victims of incest too. Who knows.

Fukuyama

mariaalice wrote: »

It not about blaming men nor were they evil, they come our of it as weak more that anything. It is striking how their voices are not often heard in all this.

Well, they weren't the victims so it'd be a bit rich if they came out with an "poor us" attitude.

They also weren't the ones abusing inmates (in this case) or covering up what might be thousands of deaths. What men are you hoping will speak out?

Certainly men of today are being vocal about it on social media and in everyday conversations.

It was an issue with Irish society mostly due to poverty and the church.

Azwaldo55

Things have changed but don't fool yourself that Ireland does not have dark goings on.

Many single mothers are abandoned by the father of their child whose name is not on the birth cert. Unless there is a DNA test how would you know who the father is? Many single mothers live in poverty and unemployment and their children go to school hungry and are doomed to drink and drugs, poverty, unemployment and going in and out of jail. If these children end up in care social workers don't check up enough about their welfare and the state is shaving so many euros off their budget they don't give a damn about whether they are neglected or sexually abused or not. There are inadequate services today for people who are vulnerable and many young people are ending up on the streets.
Thousands of women are silently going to England and elsewhere to abort their babies and are expected to say nothing about it when they come back while abortion is illegal in this country and if a women gets an abortion in this jurisdiction she will get life in prison.
There is a thriving trade in trafficked women who are lured here with the promise of jobs before being beaten black and blue and hooked on heroin to make them work as whores to service men from all walks of life who have a wife and kids at home.
Violence against women in the home is still rife and sexual abuse of children will always be going on and not being reported properly.
Alcoholism is as bad as ever while male suicide is still being glossed over and mental health services are just not adequate.
Homophobic bullying is epidemic and lesbians and gays are still discriminated against and attacked.

jellyboy

mariaalice wrote: »

I am wonder what thought do you have on men and the mother and baby homes.

The church gets talked about.

The woman gets talked about.

Society at the time gets mentioned.

You rarely hear from the men and as it takes two to get pregnant for every mother and baby in the homes there must have been a man who got the mother pregnant.

That means there were and are thousand men out there maybe old now, who either raped the woman, abandon them after sex or after a relationship, felt the woman were repugnant to them because they were willing to have sex with them before marriage as was the convention of the time and let them go in to mother and baby homes because they were seen as somehow not chase. The men's lives were never ruined they went on to married more respectable or suitable women, Not all men of course theire were some I am sure who were devastated by what happened but most did not seem to care.

Are you for real?

Knob Longman

mariaalice wrote: »

I am not the women were let down by everyone, but we rarely here from the men involved and its an interesting point how the men were able to live with the double standards of having sex with the women yet often abandoning them( not all men) or even felling shame that they has sex with the woman and letting the church or the woman families sort it out for them while they moved on with their lives. I was listing to a woman on the radio a few weeks a ago talking about it and the man literally told her to go away he did not want anything to do with her again.

I'd wager a guess the men got away with not having to accept responsibility, And not being shamed by the church or ostracized by the community, Simply because they were men, The church clearly values men above women. Its as if its the womens fault for having being attractive enough to tempt the man into having sex with her..

Seriously?

The assumption in this hypothesis is that the father first of all even knew that they were a father and where also in a position to do anything about it.

That’s not to say all men where blameless, but it is disingenuous to infer that the fathers (and by extension men) exclusively allowed this to occur.

newport2

Seriously? wrote: »

The assumption in this hypothesis is that the father first of all even knew that they were a father and where also in a position to do anything about it.

That’s not to say all men where blameless, but it is disingenuous to infer that the fathers (and by extension men) exclusively allowed this to occur.

Society has changed.

Back then, women got the blame for getting pregnant.

Now, men get the blame for everything.

(In fairness, "men" are the only group of people that it's socially acceptable to blame collectively for anything, taking examples of what a minority do and attributing it to all of them.)

visual

I would go on to say that it was women(nuns) who inflicted the harshest misery on these girls and their babies who where both baby boys and girls and from the death rates can assume they as good as mudered those chrildren.
Yet this is turned into a male bashing excise !