Unmarried Irish mothers in UK 'relieved baby was getting a good home' — adoption report
'Few, if any of the long birth certificates had fathers’ names on them — it was generally just the mother’s name.'
A former adoption social worker who worked with unmarried Irish women who were pregnant in the UK said the mothers were often “relieved that the baby was getting a good home”.
The comments were made in a new report published by the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) to mark 72 years since the Adoption Act was introduced with the aim of preventing illegal or forced adoptions.
The AAI's report contains a technical study looking at how an adoption happens, and why. A second report contains 14 interviews with people affected by adoption.
Key findings include the persistent culture of secrecy; the salience of adoption-related information; and how individuals used personal agency to effect change.
The report also highlights important legislative changes that impacted domestic adoption over the period spanning from 1952 to 2022.
It was carried out by researchers at the Adoption Authority of Ireland.
Anne Ronayne, who worked at Cúnamh, a large Catholic Irish adoption agency from the early 1950s until her retirement in the 1990s, told the study she worked with the UK regarding women who were “pregnant from Ireland”.
”As an adoption agency, we did a lot of work with a number of the 'Catholic Rescue Societies' in the UK," she said.
“That’s how the referrals came to us. There was one Catholic Rescue Society in each UK diocese. The girls were called PFIs — Pregnant from Ireland — and they were automatically assumed to be Catholic if they were Irish.
"I think the position was that if a 'Pregnant from Ireland' girl presented to a hospital in the UK, the hospital staff felt the best outcome for her would be to return to Ireland through an Irish agency.
“All of these pregnant Irish girls were considered to be ‘extra’ in the UK, as they were putting additional pressure and strain on the UK system. So, the UK hospital staff were very pleased to ask these girls if they wanted to return to Ireland with the agency’s assistance. I imagine some of the girls didn’t want to come back to Ireland, but a lot of them agreed.
"I don’t think any of them went directly home to their families after the birth. I think they all went back to England, to institute a new life there.
She also said many adoptive parents did not want to know about the birth mothers just as the birth mothers did not want to know about them.
When it came to the identity of birth fathers, the social worker said: “I don’t think I ever met a birth father. A lot of the birth parents would not have been in regular relationships, they were in casual relationships, and, in many cases, the girls didn’t want the fathers to know that they’d had their babies.
"Few, if any of the long birth certificates had fathers’ names on them — it was generally just the mother’s name”.
The report also shows there were 102 adoptions in Ireland in 2022. They included:
- 25 adoption orders for 17-year-olds;
- 33 adoption orders for 12 to 16-year-olds 23 for children aged 7 to 11 years;
- Eight for children aged 2 to 6 years;
- Two adoption orders for children aged 0-1.
The report also examines adoptions from 1952 to 2022 — the year the Birth and Tracking Act was enacted on October 1.
The Birth and Tracing Act made it legal for adoptees to access their birth information for the first time.
Up until then, the law favoured the birth mother and adoption information here was shrouded in secrecy causing much emotional distress to people who were adopted.
The report acknowledges the flaws in the system and the study is also being launched at a time when the AAI is appealing for people affected by adoption to provide feedback on how it can improve its service.
The full report is available here.
