The father of my children was adopted at birth, and as a psychologist I now counsel many who have been part of the adoption triangle. The stories that reach me convey a sense of being robbed an abandoned. While for some there is gratitude for the life that has been 'given' to them by their birth mother and subsequently the adoptive parents, there is commonly also a pervasive rage.
The jury is now in. The Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoption has revealed heinous practices.
These included denying the mother any sight or knowledge of her baby and being told the baby had died, or the baby being cared for in a nursery with minimal attention being given to facilitate 'bonding' with the adoptive parents. Ignorance was no excuse: even in the '60s English psychologist and child development expert John Bowlby exposed this kind of care as dangerous for infants.
There is now a call for a national and unambivalent apology. As with the Rudd apology to the Stolen Generations it needs to be unstinting and refrain from justifications.
You may not have noticed, but The Royal Women's Hospital has already quietly apologised to single women who gave birth in the hospital from 1945 until 1975 and who were forced to give up their children for adoptions.
The findings of a study by historian Shurlee Swain, 'Confinement and Delivery Practices in Relation to Single Women Confined at the Royal Women's Hospital 1945–1975' have a ghastly Dickensian ring. Young single new mothers were subjected to unsympathetic prolonged labours, denied access to their newborns, encouraged to adopt by social workers and not offered other options or information.
As the Senate inquiry has shown, these horrendous practices have resulted in a lifetime of grief, hurt, shame and anger for many women. Teenage mothers received little or no emotional support and many were instructed to forget about the whole experience. There was a stigma surrounding conception out of wedlock and families hid or denied the truth about the lost babies.
Many women who were forced into a 'choice' to relinquish their child have gone on to lead double lives, carrying internal scars while concealing the 'illegitimate' births from partners and subsequent children. Some later sought reunion,