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The Commission of Inquiry has said it found a “shocking level of infant mortality” in the homes of mothers and babies.
In her long-awaited report, she said that the proportion of women admitted to such homes in Ireland was probably the highest in the world in the 20th century.
The commission’s final report on 14 mother and baby homes and four county homes was released after a five-year investigation into the lives of women and children in those 18 homes during the period 1922 and 1998.
The report finds that there were about 56,000 women and 57,000 children in the homes of mothers and babies and in the homes of the county.
The highest number of admissions was in the 1960s and early 1970s.
He said that in the years before 1960, homes for mothers and babies did not save the lives of “illegitimate” children; in fact, they appear to have significantly reduced their prospects for survival.
The women who were admitted to mothers and babies homes ranged from 12-year-old girls to 40-year-old women.
80% were between 18 and 29 years old.
The commission says this was remarkably consistent in the larger homes for mothers and babies.
5,616 women or 11.4% of the total for whom information was available on their age were under 18 years of age.
The commission notes that while mother and baby homes were not a peculiarly Irish phenomenon, the proportion of Irish mothers who were admitted to mother-baby homes or county homes was probably the highest in the world.
The report says that some pregnancies were the result of rape; some women had mental health problems, others had an intellectual disability.
However, she says the only difference between women in mother-and-baby homes and their sisters, classmates and coworkers was that they got pregnant while not married.
The report says: “Their lives were ruined by out-of-wedlock pregnancies and responses from their child’s father, their immediate families, and the wider community.”
The women were admitted to mother and baby homes and county homes because they could not secure the support of their family and the father of their child.
They were forced to leave home and find a place to stay, without having to pay.
The report says that “many were destitute.”
Women who feared the consequences of their relatives and neighbors knowing about their pregnancies entered homes for mothers and babies to protect their privacy. Some traveled to Britain for the same reason.
The commission states that there was no evidence that women were forced into maternal and child homes by the Church or state authorities.
“Most of the women had no choice.”
The women were taken to maternal and child homes by their parents or other family members, without being consulted about their fate, he says.
“The homes for mothers and babies gave some assurance that their secret would be protected.”
With regard to children in institutions, the commission says that the vast majority of children in institutions were “illegitimate” and, because of this, experienced discrimination for most of their lives.
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He points out that the vast majority of children born in institutions do not remember their time there, but some remained in institutions after their mother left and a small number were in institutions until they were seven years old.
The report claims that women and children should not have been in institutions.
He says conditions were “regulated and institutional,” especially in larger institutions before the 1970s, but adds that there is no evidence of the kind of serious abuse that occurred in industrial schools and there are a small number of abuse complaints. physical.
The commission of inquiry found that many of the women suffered emotional abuse and were often subjected to denigration and derogatory comments.
The report says: “It seems that they were shown little kindness and this was particularly the case when they were giving birth.”
He says that large institutions were regulated and lacked sufficient staff until the last decades.
The report claims that the atmosphere appears to have been cold and uncaring.
Many of the women found childbirth to be a traumatic experience.
The vast majority were new mothers and were probably not informed about childbirth.
The report says the trauma of childbirth must have been especially difficult for women who had no prospect of keeping the child.
However, the hostile comments were not limited to homes for mothers and babies.
Women who were transferred from a home for mothers and babies to maternity hospitals to give birth, for medical reasons, were subjected to hostile comments from other patients and their visitors.
The commission also found evidence that after 1973 and the introduction of the single mothers allowance, women who became pregnant were not always aware of this allowance and continued to face pressure from family “and perhaps staff in a home to mothers and babies “to place their children. children for adoption.
The report says there is no evidence that the Catholic hierarchy played a role in the day-to-day running of the homes for mothers and babies.
However, it says that a religious congregation wishing to open any establishment in a diocese, such as a school, novitiate or a home for mothers and babies, needed the permission of the diocesan bishop.
It notes that the Galway County Administrator kept the Archbishop of Tuam and the Bishop of Galway informed of plans to move the Tuam Children’s Home to the outskirts of Galway in the late 1950s.
The archbishop described the proposal as “undesirable in every way”; stated that the proposed new location was near a busy highway. “Anyone who has experience running a Home for Single Mothers will tell you that the Home should be in a quiet, remote place surrounded by high walls.”
The commission says it has not seen any evidence that the religious orders, which ran the homes for mothers and babies, made a profit from doing so.
He says that on several occasions, it is clear that they struggled to make ends meet and that their members were not always paid for their work.
She says this was “a particular problem when employment levels fell and women stayed for shorter periods.” Payments from local authorities were not always made on time.
Socially, the report points to the question of a family’s position in the community.
Many Irish marriages until the 1960s involved an element of mating and a dowry and these processes depended on the respectability of the family.
An ‘illegitimate’ birth could destroy prospects for marriage, not just for the woman who had given birth, but also for her siblings, hence the pressures to keep it a secret by sending her home with a mother and baby.
Many women who concealed their pregnancy from their parents or relatives were aware of these attitudes. The pressure to keep her pregnancy a secret adds to a woman’s trauma.
A total of about 9,000 children died in the institutions under investigation, about 15% of all children who were in the institutions.
On the issue of infant mortality, the commission says that while the Irish Free State’s Registrar General’s first report highlighted the dire excess mortality of children born to single mothers and subsequent reports from the Department of Local Government and Public Health noted the fact that there was little evidence that politicians or the public were concerned about these children.
“There was no publicity about the fact that in some years during the 1930s and 1940s, more than 40% of ‘illegitimate’ children died before their first birthday in maternal and child homes.
Denominational rivalry, he says, was not unique to Ireland, but it appears to have persisted longer than elsewhere, affecting the homes of Irish mothers and babies until the 1940s.
“The main motivation behind the British and Irish Catholic charities involved in the repatriation of Irish women from Great Britain, whether pregnant or with their newborn baby, was to prevent these children from being ‘lost’ to Catholicism through adoption in Protestant families.
Concerns, albeit far-fetched, that state-regulated adoption would result in Catholic children being adopted by parents of a different religion were a factor that delayed the introduction of legal adoption in Ireland until 1952.
It notes that Ireland was the penultimate Western European country to legislate for adoption.
The National Advisory Service has been asked to provide counseling to former residents through their counseling locations.
For information on available supports and information on how to access the HSE live team, call 1800 817 517, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. M. At 8 p. M. And on Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a. M. At 5 p. M.
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