Cambridge research helps lead to UK Government apology on forced adoptions

In 2021, the UK Government launched an inquiry coordinated through the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the topic of “The Right to Family Life: adoption of children of unmarried women 1949-1976”. 

The focus of this inquiry was to examine the processes and impacts whereby more than 180,000 mothers were forced to place children for adoption through practices implemented by Mother and Baby homes, historical institutions operated largely by religious organisations, charities and local authorities where unmarried women were often forced to place newly born children for adoption under cruel and coercive processes and against their will.

Written and oral research evidence provided by Professor Gordon Harold and the Andrew and Virginia Rudd Research and Professional Practice Programme as part of this 2021 inquiry and more recently to the UK Government’s Education Committee, illustrated that as a result of practices implemented in Mother and Baby homes during the period of inquiry focus, mothers and children experienced significant lifelong, debilitating trauma-related outcomes, often leading to severe mental illness, physical illness and other adverse outcomes.  

After a long and arduous process of evidence-informed and lived-experience advocacy, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson confirmed while giving evidence to the House of Commons Education Committee that a full apology will be provided by the Prime Minister in the coming weeks to mothers, adoptees and others who were subjected to the cruel and shameful practices perpetrated by Mother and Baby homes and state-related bodies during the era of forced adoption in England. Apologies have already been provided in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Speaking following the announcement, Professor Harold, from the Faculty of Education, said: “This is enormous news and will be welcomed by the many mothers, adoptees and others who have campaigned on this issue for decades.

“Our research submission clearly indicated that the practices perpetrated against unmarried mothers and children during this era (and in the years that followed) were cruel and inhumane. Mothers were coerced and coached by state-supported practitioners, professionals and others, often including their own families, to believe that they were at fault, to blame and singularly responsible for the then socially-stigmatising label of being an ‘unmarried mother’. 

“Our research illustrated that self-blaming attributions, feelings of shame, guilt, abandonment, chronic loneliness and a need for secrecy, were feelings and experiences consistently reported by mothers who endured the conditions and punitive processes of mother and baby homes implemented under the guise of acting in the best interests of the mother, child and the state during this period, and in the decades that followed.

“This apology represents the start of a process that allows the victims of practices perpetrated during this era to conclude ‘I am not a bad person, I am a good person. I am not the architect of these experiences and their impacts, I am a victim of these experiences. I can now begin a journey toward recovery and redress.

“Implementing the recommendations provided by the Education Committee and endorsed by UK Government through this apology of course represents the next significant challenge – and opportunity.”