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Pregnancy out of wedlock and perception of disgrace.
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I find it a little far-fetched. Did this ever really happen? (Kicking out a student priest because of a pregnant sister?)
It would be like criticising one of the Apostles for associating with Mary Magdalen.
If it did happen, shocking.
Happened in all positions that were supposed to be 'respectable' and still does to a degree0 -
Donald Trump wrote: »While what you say is correct, there are also women who get pregnant by fellas whom they know already have numerous kids individually with other women that they don't do anything for.
If a fella is the type that doesn't accept any consequences or responsibility for things, he is even less likely to take reasonable precautions
A girl can be unlucky and get pregnant by a fella who seemed otherwise responsible and stable of course. You can't know in advance. But if she gets pregnant by a fella that already ignores the 4 different kids he has had with 4 different women over the previous few years years then she can't really say she would have expected him to take responsibility for hers.
Yes that is a very good point alright,, I totally agree and you would imagine that they would think about that before getting involved, but I think there is that element maybe they think they will be the one to 'change' the man. I am not saying I think it's a right attitude to have, but maybe if you have low self esteem and are immature you can't see the situation for what it is.0 -
I don’t know if the report is a ‘whitewash’ but is even from its outset limited in many ways. Like all tribunals and inquiries it seems to say something bad happened in the past but there is no concrete evidence to prove it and it is now too long ago to do anything about it. Apart from discussion about the issue little becomes of it.
Well that isn’t enough. The worst seems to predate 1965 and any concrete evidence is now probably destroyed or those involved dead. Most Gardai of the time would not have recorded any crimes of the religious then anyway.
However, there are cases from 1970 on that with a proper criminal investigation could show illegal activities. A special Garda forensic investigation should be done on the most likely cases to provide proof. If institutions or departments and individuals can be prosecuted then they could do so. That would be something.0 -
I don’t know if the report is a ‘whitewash’ but is even from its outset limited in many ways. Like all tribunals and inquiries it seems to say something bad happened in the past but there is no concrete evidence to prove it and it is now too long ago to do anything about it. Apart from discussion about the issue little becomes of it.
Well that isn’t enough. The worst seems to predate 1965 and any concrete evidence is now probably destroyed or those involved dead. Most Gardai of the time would not have recorded any crimes of the religious then anyway.
However, there are cases from 1970 on that with a proper criminal investigation could show illegal activities. A special Garda forensic investigation should be done on the most likely cases to provide proof. If institutions or departments and individuals can be prosecuted then they could do so. That would be something.
Who would be prosecuted though? the nuns involved are long dead, could the catholic church as an institution be prosecuted?0 -
Yes, I've seen it with women who get involved with men with a history of violence. Convinced he would never do the same to her.Yes that is a very good point alright,, I totally agree and you would imagine that they would think about that before getting involved, but I think there is that element maybe they think they will be the one to 'change' the man. I am not saying I think it's a right attitude to have, but maybe if you have low self esteem and are immature you can't see the situation for what it is.0 -
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Pregnancy does not happen by accident.....it requires actual choices
I am not including rape here.....
Pregnancy can and does does happen by accident. If it were a choice then there would be no such thing as a crisis pregnancy, abortion and contraception would be obsolete, and all the people struggling with infertility would have an abundance of babies.
With typical use, the pill is roughly 91% effective. That means for every 100 women who use it typically, 9 will become pregnant. That’s just one example of contraceptive failure.
I don’t know why the responsibility and blame consistently falls on the women’s shoulders as if she became pregnant all by herself, but I’m not remotely surprised to see such comments on threads like these.
Why aren’t you urging your fellow men to be more responsible, use their own contraception and be there for and support the the children they created?0 -
mariaalice wrote: »Who would be prosecuted though? the nuns involved are long dead, could the catholic church as an institution be prosecuted?
Many involved in the 70's and 80's would be elderly, some may be dead but many would be alive and compos mentis still. Average age expectancy for women is 82 probably higher for religious. Also if a corporation can be sued or fined I'm sure a religious organisation could be too.0 -
Pregnancy can and does does happen by accident. If it were a choice then there would be no such thing as a crisis pregnancy, abortion and contraception would be obsolete, and all the people struggling with infertility would have an abundance of babies.
With typical use, the pill is roughly 91% effective. That means for every 100 women who use it typically, 9 will become pregnant. That’s just one example of contraceptive failure.
I don’t know why the responsibility and blame consistently falls on the women’s shoulders as if she became pregnant all by herself, but I’m not remotely surprised to see such comments on threads like these.
Why aren’t you urging your fellow men to be more responsible, use their own contraception and be there for and support the the children they created?
It's because generally sexual activity is consensual? Women consent to having sex. Men can be handsome and physically fit dress well good providers confident and charming etc but it's women who consent. Men can't make women have sex with them. If some women didn't have sex with married men or one night stands with single men they just met etc there wouldn't be unwanted crisis pregnancies by definition. Women have more power than men do in the sexual market place. Very few men are ever approached by women. Most men have to compete with multiple other men for the attention of attractive women. Most men are rudely told where to go or simply ignored as invisible. Hence the term "get lucky" referring to a one night stand with a woman at the weekend.
A typical night out with a group of guys ends with them all going home frustrated.
In the Bible if a woman was raped in the countryside she was blameless because other people were not around. However if she was raped in a city or town she was put to death because she didn't cry out for help and was therefore blamed.
This is why traditionally women get the blame for an unwanted pregnancy and were treated accordingly in Irish society as a slut.
It's why negative attitudes to women persist.
A man who has sex with multiple women is seen as a hero because to do so is feat requiring trojan efforts due to massive number of rejections behind every conquest.
For a woman to have sex with multiple men is considered low because all a woman has to do is ask and the reality most men are so desperate for sex they would sleep with any women who is available.
Married men will pay for sex with a woman but consider all prostitutes beneath contempt while playing happy families with their adoring wife and children.0 -
Samsonsmasher wrote: »If some women didn't have sex with married men or one night stands with single men they just met etc there wouldn't be unwanted crisis pregnancies by definition.
What a bizarre thing to say. A crisis pregnancy can happen to anyone.0 -
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What a bizarre thing to say. A crisis pregnancy can happen to anyone.
Yes they can but the overwhelming majority of crisis pregnancies are among young single unmarried women and typically these end in abortions whereas before abortion in England was an option in the late 1960s these girls had their babies in mother and baby homes. The decline of mother and baby homes after this point was due to abortion in England and the black market in contraceptive pills. Otherwise these institutions would still be up and running to this day. Our welfare system would not have been able to cope.0 -
I don’t know why the responsibility and blame consistently falls on the women’s shoulders as if she became pregnant all by herself, but I’m not remotely surprised to see such comments on threads like these.
Why aren’t you urging your fellow men to be more responsible, use their own contraception and be there for and support the the children they created?
There is a problem with this logic. It is great in theory for the fellas who would acknowledge their responsibility. It would have zero affect on those that won't.
One would have to imagine that there is a high correlation between fellas who would not acknowledge responsibility and those that are more willing or wanting to take risks.
I mean you have to be realistic and practical.0 -
Samsonsmasher wrote: »Yes they can but the overwhelming majority of crisis pregnancies are among young single unmarried women and typically these end in abortions whereas before abortion in England was an option in the late 1960s these girls had their babies in mother and baby homes. The decline of mother and baby homes after this point was due to abortion in England and the black market in contraceptive pills. Otherwise these institutions would still be up and running to this day. Our welfare system would not have been able to cope.
That’s not what you said though. You said if young single women didn’t have sex with married men or have one night stands (both abhorrent generalisations, btw), there would be no such thing as a crisis pregnancy.
Which just about proves how ignorant you are as to what constitutes a crisis pregnancy to me. It can happen to anyone, of any age, of any background, and of any marital status. It doesn’t discriminate.
Many married older women regularly access abortion services for a myriad of reasons with the support of their partners. It isn’t just silly schoolgirls getting knocked up by the local bad boy at all.0 -
Donald Trump wrote: »There is a problem with this logic. It is great in theory for the fellas who would acknowledge their responsibility. It would have zero affect on those that won't.
One would have to imagine that there is a high correlation between fellas who would not acknowledge responsibility and those that are more willing or wanting to take risks.
I mean you have to be realistic and practical.
We have to be realistic and practical and stop expecting men to take ownership of their own contraception and subsequent parental responsibilities?
Is that the best we can do, really? Just let them off the hook cause it’s not practical while the woman is left holding the baby?0 -
We have to be realistic and practical and stop expecting men to take ownership of their own contraception and subsequent parental responsibilities?
Is that the best we can do, really? Just let them off the hook cause it’s not practical while the woman is left holding the baby?
Of course they should be on the hook. However how many walk away?0 -
Samsonsmasher wrote: »Yes they can but the overwhelming majority of crisis pregnancies are among young single unmarried women and typically these end in abortions whereas before abortion in England was an option in the late 1960s these girls had their babies in mother and baby homes. The decline of mother and baby homes after this point was due to abortion in England and the black market in contraceptive pills. Otherwise these institutions would still be up and running to this day. Our welfare system would not have been able to cope.
Most abortions, at least in the UK, are actually on older women. The rate of pregnancy in younger women has been falling for years. A lot of those women would be in relationships too. Not every pregnancy is a blessing.0 -
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mrslancaster wrote: »No such thing as a fatherless child @irishproduce.
There's an awful lot of shock & discussion now from the report released yesterday. Everyone is talking about the role of those who ran mother & baby homes, how the government didn't provide care or help & the attitudes of families and society at the time.
yes they all failed & it is truly horrific what happened & so upsetting to hear all of the terrible stories.
but there is a deafening silence about the men who fathered those babies.
Why did so many men abandon their children? Why did they think it was ok to walk away from the mothers & their responsibilities?
I don't know the answer to that but it is still happening today. Even though women have more options today, many still find themselves abandoned & alone. We can't blame the church or societal attitudes now.
Shame on every one of those fathers who walk away.
To be fair, not all walked away. Many were sent away. I know of one man who at 19 years of age was sent to America as his families way of dealing with 'the problem'. He was literally banished by his family and only ever made one trip home in 60 years.
On the other hand, their were 56,000 mothers involved in all of this which of course would imply that there were also 56,000 fathers, many of whom did walk away.What priest? On whose authority was he acting? What year was this? Where were they planning to take you? Good story; you got a few likes and you got to jump on the evil priests and nuns bandwagon but it didn't happen.
I don't know what age you are but I'm guessing mid-thirties at the most. If you're older than that I apologise but you must have lead a very sheltered life. This was most certainly 'a thing' right up to the mid-nineties. Don't forget that the last deceased baby associated with Bessboro was in 1994.
When I got married in 1987 we were refused permission to marry in my wifes parish church due to already having a child and were told in no uncertain terms to never again darken the doors of that church, the same church where she had received baptism, communion and confirmation.0 -
That’s not what you said though. You said if young single women didn’t have sex with married men or have one night stands (both abhorrent generalisations, btw), there would be no such thing as a crisis pregnancy.
Which just about proves how ignorant you are as to what constitutes a crisis pregnancy to me. It can happen to anyone, of any age, of any background, and of any marital status. It doesn’t discriminate.
Many married older women regularly access abortion services for a myriad of reasons with the support of their partners. It isn’t just silly schoolgirls getting knocked up by the local bad boy at all.
In the past older married women simply had their babies and that was that. At the time there was no married mothers pregancy crisis.
What concerned the church were unmarried single women with nobody to support them.
Because as I said before these women consented to sex knowing it was a sin in the eyes of society and the church and it fell upon church charities to take them into its institutions to feed them cloth them house them put them to work and find homes for their children they were seen as richly deserving the misery inflicted upon them.0 -
My step-uncle died almost 20 years ago, literally a week before he passed away from cancer my mother revealed to us that he was in-fact her own half-brother and not the brother of my grandmother like we were told.
I had always just known him as a grand uncle. My grandmother aged 17 had been raped and my step-uncle was the result of the rape. I think because of this there was no forced adoption or huge pressure from the Church at time to enter a Mother and Baby home. The man responsible was tried and went to prison, my step uncle was raised by his grandmother (my great grandmother). However he knew the situation and was not shunned or anything. In his late teens he emigrated to England to work in the buildings spending 20+ years there.
This Christmas one of my uncles visited and I accidentally stumbled upon a probable hypothesis in relation to the family. Through simple dates I discovered a very high likelihood that my eldest uncle was a conceived through wedlock but born legitimately, my grandmother was aged 20 when my uncle was born, my grandfather was aged 50 at the time so I am thinking it was maybe a shotgun marriage. The eldest uncle was born in August of the same year as his parents got married.
My grand-parents were neighbours living very close to each other (<700 metres) and my grandfather was a widow man as his first wife had died without children. He owned a farm and modern house built in the late 30's and was a Veteran of the tan War, from an economic point of view he would have been a very eligible bachelor at the time. My grandmothers family had been evicted from their lands after the War of Independence and lived in a house built by Church funds so were by comparison very poor in comparison to my grandfather. They married and had six kids and my grandmother was herself widowed at 40 and the IRA pension helped them out alot in incredibly harsh times on a small farm of poor land. I often wonder would my grandmother have been viewed badly in the community after her first son and a 50 year old and 20 year old today is really uncommon, but different times back then.0 -
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Samsonsmasher wrote: »In the past older married women simply had their babies and that was that. At the time there was no married mothers pregancy crisis.
What concerned the church were unmarried single women with nobody to support them.
Because as I said before these women consented to sex knowing it was a sin in the eyes of society and the church and it fell upon church charities to take them into its institutions to feed them cloth them house them put them to work and find homes for their children they were seen as richly deserving the misery inflicted upon them.
Again, yes there was. You are completely wrong on that count.
Older women, married or not, who experienced crisis pregnancies often went to the UK if they had the funds, or found other local methods to end their pregnancies.
The reason for the crisis was varied, from health issues, financial issues, domestic violence, sexual abuse, or the inability to care for an extra child.
Older women experienced these issues just as much as younger women did.
It wasn’t always as simple as just having the baby and getting on with it, that didn’t always happen.
If there was no crisis pregnancies across all ages there would have been no one getting the boat to England.
It’s that simple really.
You’re also fooling no one because the church weren’t remotely concerned about these women or their babies, they used these unfortunate women as cash cows, for free labour and child trafficking under the guise of catholic charity and compassion.
They did not care one iota for their well-being, they didn’t do it out of the goodness of their heart. It was all about the money.
The women didn’t always consent either but that aside, what about the men?
Did they not also consent knowing it was a sin? What of them? Why should only the woman be shamed and punished and have her life ruined?
You’re also neglecting to acknowledge that sex education and contraception were both taboos back then.
There were many stories this week of 14 year olds in full blown labour with no idea as to where the baby would even come out, such was the limit of their knowledge.
They were kept in complete ignorance, denied contraception and expected to deny their natural urges.
It wasn’t their fault they became pregnant and they most certainly didn’t ‘richly deserve the misery inflicted upon them’.
The babies were also severely punished for the ‘sins’ of their mothers which is even more disgusting.
It was a horrible vile period of our history that there is no justifying or explaining away.0 -
Samsonsmasher wrote: »In the past older married women simply had their babies and that was that. At the time there was no married mothers pregancy crisis.
What concerned the church were unmarried single women with nobody to support them.
Because as I said before these women consented to sex knowing it was a sin in the eyes of society and the church and it fell upon church charities to take them into its institutions to feed them cloth them house them put them to work and find homes for their children they were seen as richly deserving the misery inflicted upon them.
What in the actual hell are you on? I've read some amount of rubbish on here, but this takes the biscuit.0 -
Again, yes there was. You are completely wrong on that count.
Older women, married or not, who experienced crisis pregnancies often went to the UK if they had the funds, or found other local methods to end their pregnancies.
The reason for the crisis was varied, from health issues, financial issues, domestic violence, sexual abuse, or the inability to care for an extra child.
Older women experienced these issues just as much as younger women did.
It wasn’t always as simple as just having the baby and getting on with it, that didn’t always happen.
If there was no crisis pregnancies across all ages there would have been no one getting the boat to England.
It’s that simple really.
You’re also fooling no one because the church weren’t remotely concerned about these women or their babies, they used these unfortunate women as cash cows, for free labour and child trafficking under the guise of catholic charity and compassion.
They did not care one iota for their well-being, they didn’t do it out of the goodness of their heart. It was all about the money.
The women didn’t always consent either but that aside, what about the men?
Did they not also consent knowing it was a sin? What of them? Why should only the woman be shamed and punished and have her life ruined?
You’re also neglecting to acknowledge that sex education and contraception were both taboos back then.
There were many stories this week of 14 year olds in full blown labour with no idea as to where the baby would even come out, such was the limit of their knowledge.
They were kept in complete ignorance, denied contraception and expected to deny their natural urges.
It wasn’t their fault they became pregnant and they most certainly didn’t ‘richly deserve the misery inflicted upon them’.
The babies were also severely punished for the ‘sins’ of their mothers which is even more disgusting.
It was a horrible vile period of our history that there is no justifying or explaining away.
I'm not justifying it.
I am explaining the reasoning behind what was done.
That's why they did this and convinced themselves they were doing God's work.0 -
What in the actual hell are you on? I've read some amount of rubbish on here, but this takes the biscuit.
The nuns told these women they were doing this for their own good - taking their babies and punishing them for having pre marital sex by making them work as penance for their sins.
The women who were subjected to this cruelty have said so.0 -
the majority of these adoptions from Ireland as the child in question had been removed from the UK (a country which at least had adoption regulations in place, even if they were easy to circumvent) rather than Ireland, was born through wedlock, and had not been resident in a religious institution.
Ireland had no such adoption regulations in the early 1950s. Many of the adoptions thus secured were those of US armed forces servicemen serving in the UK, who were looking to bring a child home to the US with them.
A civil servant from External Affairs explains the Department’s powerlessness to interfere in a memo dating from December 1951:
“… (British) make it an offence to bring a child in such circumstances out of Great Britain. Here there is no offence unless the child were being abducted.”
Put simply, at that time an American citizen had only to secure a passport (which was easily done) for the child they wished to adopt in order to claim them.disturbingly, the guaranteed ‘whiteness’ of the Irish children in question appears to be something of a selling point according to the civil servant:0 -
Nuns treated 11-year-old rape victims as if they were prostitutes': How schoolgirls were among 56,000 mothers sent to hellish Irish homes where 9,000 babies died and bodies were buried in shoeboxes -They and their children were subjected to very high infant mortality rates, poor nutrition, overcrowded sleeping quarters and emotional abuse.A total of 9,768 women and 8,938 children passed through the doors of Bessborough House, Co. Cork, run by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The burial sites of the 923 children who died here still remain a mystery, largely due to the failings of local health authorities. In the baby selection process, babies weighing under 10kg and mixed-race babies were seen as not fit for adoption.
Those babies ended up in industrial schools where they would be open to torture and sexual abuse among other horrors.
Up to 9,000 children died in 18 institutions between 1922 and the closure The death rate among 'illegitimate' children was always considerably higher than that among 'legitimate' children, but it was higher still in the mother and baby homes.
Between 1945 and 1946, the death rate in the homes was almost twice that of the national average for 'illegitimate' children.
About 9,000 children died in the institutions under investigation, about 15% of all the children who were in the homes .
'In the years before 1960 mother and baby homes did not save the lives of 'illegitimate' children; in fact, they appear to have significantly reduced their prospects of survival,0 -
Samsonsmasher wrote: »I'm not justifying it.
I am explaining the reasoning behind what was done.
That's why they did this and convinced themselves they were doing God's work.
You don’t need to explain because no matter what the reasoning was, it was wrong. I accept it was a different time with different values and culture but we can still look back and say that it was a disgraceful way to treat people regardless of all that.
I don’t consider myself Catholic but I don’t know what part of ‘gods work’ involved allowing 9k+ babies to die from abuse or neglect, burying children and babies with no dignity in septic tanks, selling children as if they were cattle to the highest bidder and using the labour provided by the poor women they imprisoned for profit.
You will never convince me that they didn’t know exactly what they were doing and that it was wrong, or that they thought that this was ‘gods work’. It was greed and it was abuse.
But they knew such was their chokehold on society, the law, the schools, the hospitals, and the government, that they’d get away with it.
They knew no one would dare question them for fear of bringing their wrath on their own family.
They’re not sorry they did it, they’re only sorry they got caught.
There is something very wrong about getting innocent little 7/8 year olds to confess their ‘sins’ to the very people who perpetuated, carried out, and turned a blind eye to these abuses.0 -
We have to be realistic and practical and stop expecting men to take ownership of their own contraception and subsequent parental responsibilities?
Is that the best we can do, really? Just let them off the hook cause it’s not practical while the woman is left holding the baby?
None of your rant is relevant to what I posted. You can live your own life how you want to, or teach your own kids what you want0 -
We have to be realistic and practical and stop expecting men to take ownership of their own contraception and subsequent parental responsibilities?
Is that the best we can do, really? Just let them off the hook cause it’s not practical while the woman is left holding the baby?
I have seen many a case where a woman gets involved with a man who clearly is not good "father material". If you are getting pregnant by a guy who is not going to be a good father then it's stupid to be surprised when he turns out to be such. He might have been an attractive "bad boy" though.0 -
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Str8outtaWuhan wrote: »What everyone forgets is while the church and state were in cahoots, where were the fathers and family of these poor girls? many of the families handed the girls over to save face. surely this is the greatest betrayal?
Not all families did this. My mother told me once about a girl who became pregnant in the late 40s. She lived about a mile outside the town. Two priests went to her house, insisting she had to leave the parish as she would be giving 'bad example' to the other young girls there. Her father sent the priests running, telling them that, as long as there was breath in his body, his daughter and her baby would have a roof over their heads in his house. Sad to think that that man was heroic, for standing up to the power of the church. Most people could not resist the pressure from those bullies.0
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