Fact Sheet # 6: MENTALLY UNFIT WOMEN WERE ALLOWED TO ADOPT BABIES

Social Workers and Moral Welfare Workers claimed ‘Adoption is in baby’s best interests’, but the safety, welfare and interests of a baby did not take precedence when it was adopted. Until the 1970’s it was common practice to give infertile couples a baby because the wife was mentally unfit.

Childless married women suffering functional derangement, whose behaviour proved their inability to take a rationally objective view of life were allowed to adopt a baby.

In 1966 Senior Social Worker and Tutor Jane Rowe confirmed that mentally unfit married women adopted babies as a medicine for neurosis, to cure personality difficulties or marriage problems.

Some couples adopted a baby out of genuine love of children; many more had unhealthy or ulterior motives:-

To replicate the hypothetical baby fate had denied them.
To replace a baby that died in infancy.
To trigger ovulation and produce a baby of their own.
To gratify an obsession with a specific gender.
To conceal the fact they did not have sexual intercourse.
To save a failing marriage or as insurance against old age
To sexually abuse them.
And to benefit mentally unfit neurotic women.

In 1975 Social Worker Margaret Kornitzer wrote that Doctors made a practice of finding babies for their emotionally disturbed women patients, in the same spirit as prescribing bottles of medicine.

"As a Doctor once put it to me, ‘After all my first duty is to my patient.’ If he saw a neurotic childless wife making life a misery for herself and her husband he thought it his duty to find her a baby."

None of the professionals involved thought it their duty to put the baby first. They ignored the fact that a neurotic childless woman, who was making life a misery for herself and her husband, could/would also make life a misery for the baby they allowed her to adopt.

Infant adoption was designed to provide childless married couples with instant families – regardless of the actual or potential risks to the baby.

Social Workers and Moral Welfare Workers depicted adopters as respectable married couples who had been interviewed, investigated and health checked to prove their suitability to adopt a baby.

The facts prove the rhetoric was often far removed from the reality.

A mentally unfit married woman was allowed to adopt the baby of an unmarried mother. But a mentally healthy unmarried mother was denied the right to keep her own baby. And a mentally healthy unmarried mother was detained for life in an Asylum as morally deficient.

Copyright © Patricia Basquill, 2002 - 2010