Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Many social attitudes have changed in the last fifty or sixty years, including attitudes towards unmarried mothers. For much of the twentieth century single women who became pregnant were often described as fallen women, and in society at large a source of shame to their families. Young women, often teenagers, were often sent away from their homes to give birth elsewhere, and once born the child was often given up for adoption. There was a concern with family respectability. Some children were more-or-less forcibly taken for adoption. Many of the women lived in homes for unmarried mothers.
In 2023 the Joint Committee on Human Rights of both Houses of Parliament published The Violation of Family Life: Adoption of Children of Unmarried Women 1949– 1976. It estimated that in the UK between 1949 and 1976 185,000 children were given up for adoption. The adoptions in this period were closed adoptions. There was a complete re-engineering of identity, birth records and associated family links. The report notes the lifelong suffering experienced by many of the mothers and children as a result of forced separations.
Following that report the Education Committee of the House of Commons is taking further evidence on historical adoption practices. In one session in March 2026 a witness told them “When I went to the home, it was like a punishment: the whole time I was there, my role was to scrub steps from morning until the evening. When I got to the bottom, I was told to go back to the top and do them again.”
A large number of homes were run by the Church of England. Two of them were local to All Saints, one in Haydons Road and one in Gap Road, and in the November 2025 edition of this magazine Chris Maurice wrote about the Haydons Road home where a proper Christian environment seems to have existed and where, though some babies were given up for adoption, a number of women returned to their birthplace with their child.
However, a recent report focused specifically on Church of England homes shows that that not all were of this standard. Although Church of England policy was that the mothers should take decisions about their children, the report notes that this is difficult to reconcile with “language which expressed dehumanising and dismissive attitudes, falling short of what would be expected towards anyone in the church’s care……. In the adoption process itself, children were sometimes described in commodified terms, with the BSR [Board for Social Responsibility] and diocesan adoption societies citing the need for a central ‘clearing house’ where supply and demand could meet. Alongside that, there was a reforming and ‘corrective’ nature to a number of the homes.”
In 2016 Cardinal Vincent Nichols apologised for the role of adoption agencies acting in the name of the Catholic Church in England and Wales and in 2021 the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland issued a formal apology for its role in the treatment of unmarried mothers in homes in Ireland. Following the latest report Dame Sarah Mullally has issued an apology on behalf of the Church of England for “the pain, trauma and stigma experienced – and still carried – by many people because of historical adoption practices in homes affiliated to the Church of England”. She acknowledges the way mothers had little choice about adoption, how they were often forced to carry out menial and manual work as correction, and how decisions were often influenced by prejudice about race or disability, “all of this taking place in a society that often valued secrecy and respectability over compassion and care”. She added “Today, we say to each of you: the shame you were made to feel was wrong. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Rather, we are deeply ashamed that this happened to people in the care of Christian communities.”
Although Church of England doctrine continues to be that sexual relations properly belong exclusively within lifelong, heterosexual marriage, social attitudes have changed, largely driven I suspect by the increasing secularisation of society and the free love philosophy of the 1960s. The pregnancy of an unmarried woman is no longer shameful. Indeed, it is sometimes deliberate. Churches regularly call banns of marriage for couples who are already living together and have done for some time, though of course without making any presumptions about their living arrangements. The church can hardly be surprised that many people ignore its teaching in view of the way many church homes ignored Christ’s teaching about compassion.
Forced adoptions still occur, when social services take children from parents because of neglect or abuse. As we have seen recently in a tragic case, dreadful mistakes are sometimes made in placing the children with adoptive parents. It is important that we do not generalise from this about who make good adopters. What matters is for children to live in a loving family. We must hope than many of those subjected to forced adoption in the middle decades of the last century, though denied the love of their birth mothers, found love in their adoptive family.
Blessings
Fr Christopher
All Saints' Church, South Wimbledon 