Letters to the Editor: Mother and baby homes not patriarchal, but Victorian

Artworks at the grotto on an unmarked mass grave at the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Aoife Moore is partially right that the mother and baby homes ‘were never about sin at all’ (Where are the men? Irish Examiner, January 16). It would be revisionist to claim that, at the time, there wasn’t a widespread view — largely absent today — that sex outside marriage was sinful and shameful.

However, telling us it all boils down to patriarchy is equally reductionist and simplistic. Certainly, the fathers had broken social rules, or “sinned”, too, but the women’s pregnancies and resulting children were the most visible, incontrovertible evidence; and it was this evidence that the society wished to hide.