Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been picking up on the issue of testimony and the expectations we put on people sharing their stories. We’ve looked at it in the context of pastors telling their stories of suffering from depression and Premier Radio conversation about childlessness. Well, here’s a third example concerning adoption.
A little while back, in response to a long-term campaign, the then Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer made a public apology for “forced adoptions” in the mid-20th century, something that the Church had also been involved in. There were cases were young mums, particularly teenagers were required to give up their children for adoption. Many have lived ever since with the pain and loss.
A number of the adoptees from that time have however come forward to remind us that there was another side of the story. They asked the Prime Minister not to apologise to them, they have benefited from a stable and loving life that they may not otherwise have experienced. One such response from Karen Soole was included in Evangelicals Now.[1] This prompted the following letter to the editor.
Dear Editor,
It was very interesting to read Karen Soole’s article referring to Keir Starmer’s apology for forced adoptions. Although adoption for both Karen and her adoptive parents was positive, I am saddened that there was so little mention of the person who made it all possible – her birth mother.
In Isaiah we read: “Can a mother forget her nursing child. And not have compassion on the son of her womb?” A mother’s love is not perfect – but God certainly implies that it is something very special.
The Movement for Adoption Apology was started by Veronica Smith in 2010 and gained support via the use of news articles, radio interviews and social media. Sadly Veronica didn’t live to see the eventual apology. Hopefully she realised that her work was not in vain.Her obituary was featured on Radio 4’s Last Word in 2024.
I am privileged to have met people from all points of the adoption triangle , including birth mothers from the 1960s (sometimes referred to as the “great baby scoop era”). Not all adoptions are forced but many involve much sadness, emotional trauma and unanswered questions.
Yours sincerely,
Helen Boswell
Now, I think there is a legitimate point to be raised. It is good that some people have pushed back against the idea that these adoptions were overwhelming a bad thing, not least because what replaced forced adoption in many cases was not a better understanding of how to help teenage mums care for their little ones within the framework of wider loving family (though I think there has been significant work on this) but rather the pressure towards abortion which could equally be characterised as “forced”. However, there is a complexity to the story thar could now be forgotten. There are women today who suffered an injustice and have been caused pain since. They deserved their apology and that should not be taken away from them. It is important that Christian media outlets like Evangelicals Now do not unwittingly silence the mothers’ stories in seeking to tell the children’s. Further, whilst many adoptees maty be grateful for the quality of life they have enjoyed and the opportunities given to them, whilst they may appreciate the love of their parents, that on its own does not mean we can assume that their experience if they had stayed with their birth mum would have been negative, particularly if proper support had been put in place.
The problem is that Helen Boswall, in seeking to ensure that other stories need to be told appears to seek to correct Soole’s story. Her email almost suggests a lack of gratitude towards the birth mum. This is compounded by a misunderstanding of Scripture. In Isaiah 49:15, Go asks whether a mother can forget their child in order to emphasise his faithful love. Keen eyes will note that YHWH explicitly acknowledges that yes, frail, fallen human beings can forget but that’s considered abnormal. God however is perfect in his perfect love for his people. An image is used in order to tell us something about God. This does not mean that we are to take it as an exhaustive statement about the quality and nature of motherhood. We cannot take a Biblical illustration about the usual depth of motherly love and turn it into a general claim about the nature of motherhood.
This is important because sadly many people, including those who have not been adopted and including potentially many reading the letter will sadly have experienced, absence, neglect, abuse from birth parents. Even many who have experienced happy, healthy relationships with their parents will have parents who seem to be forgetting them now through the cruel disease, dementia. We need to think carefully about the message we are sending to people, the risk that we deny their stories.
The reality is that for many adoptees, their relationship to birth parents is potentially highly complex and may remain so throughout their lives. Some will have happy memories of their early days, may talk about birth parents often and may one day long to find out more about them and meet them. Some will have birth parents who use the letter box system to write via the adoptive parents regularly. Some may have birth parents who sought to contest the adoption and some may have birth parents who recognised that this was the best option for their child. Others may still carry much pain and hurt from their past, some may carry a sense of being rejected and abandoned. There may be underlying anger. Others may have few memories and may mention birth parents rarely if at all. Similarly some birth parents may not engage with the letterbox system. For some, beyond the reproductive process there may be little or no emotional connection to their birth mum and dad.
The point is, we do not know where Soole’s story or that of other adoptees reading the letter sits in relation to those possibilities. We may be curious to know but it is not for us to insist that Karen Soole tells that part of her story to satisfy our curiosity. Furthermore, at this point we move beyond Karen’s story to her mum’s story, her dad’s story and her grandparent’s stories and she may not consider those stories she has to tell.
One further note, by using Isaiha 49:15 to describe birth mothers, Helen Boswell encroaches onto another story, that of the adoptive parents, are they less likely to remember their children because they were not physically involved in the pregnancy. Indeed, therein is an important challenge. Adoptive parents can feel pain too around the fact that they were not the ones to give birth and were not there to look after their children at their most vulnerable. Indeed, that can be a source of regret for their children too. By pressing the first storyteller to say more, or by the way we tell other people’s stories, we may unintentionally silence others who have their own stories to tell.
This is an example of a sensitive subject where not only is it helpful but desirable to hear everyone’s stories, the birth parents and their families, the children who were adopted and the families who adopted them. Rather than providing space for sharp corrections of stories, I wonder if Evangelicals Now might want to give space for more of the other stories to be told?
[1] ‘Keir Starmer, please don’t apologise to me’ | Evangelicals Now
