Forced adoption in Australia

Greens senator Rachel Siewert

A Senate committee in Australia urged the Federal government on February 29 to “issue a formal statement of apology” for the widespread practice of forcing women to give up their babies for adoption between the 1950s and 1970s. Following an 18-month inquiry, the Community Affairs References Committee collected over 400 submissions to investigate the former forced adoption policies in the post-war period. The report noted that around 150,000 unmarried women were coerced into signing their children off for adoption by churches, doctors and adoption agencies among others.

Throughout the post-war period forced adoption was widespread across Australia, as mothers who were often in their teens or unmarried were coerced into giving up their babies or “faced circumstances in which they were left with no other choice”. This was partly due to the social stigma attached to unmarried motherhood up until the 1970s, resulting in single mothers often spending the majority of their pregnancy away from home. Many were sent away from their homes to “preclude prejudice or judgement from the local community” and were either housed with relatives or group accommodation settings. Religious organisations that ran the group accommodation settings were also involved in setting up the adoption, which was often a “routine and informal” process. The evidence collected also revealed that nurses and social workers almost always recommended adoption to single mothers.

At birth, the babies were usually removed immediately and kept on a separate floor until they were taken home by adoptive parents. This was in line with the “clean break” theory which was popular in the 1950s and 1960s; it held that “the best outcome for both the mother and child is achieved when the child is adopted at birth and no further contact occurs between them”. The clean break was vaunted as a means of avoiding the social stigma associated with the unmarried mother and “fatherless” child, as everyone could just forget about the “unfortunate” incident and move on. The committee heard harrowing stories from women who had been coerced into giving up their child by being drugged or even shackled to their beds. Others claimed their signatures had been forged or they simply had not been informed by social workers of government help that may have been available to them to raise their child, thus leading them to believe adoption was the only feasible route.

Greens senator and chairwoman of the committee Rachel Siewert broke down as she tabled the report in the Senate, saying it had been a "heartbreaking inquiry" and that it was "undoubted that past policies and practices have caused great harm and hurt to mothers, fathers, adoptees, and their family members". "It is time for governments and institutions involved to accept that such actions were wrong, not merely by today's standards but by the values and laws of the time", she continued. Labor senator Claire Moore added, "the history [...] will now be known and acknowledged [...] to the people caught up in the horror of this history, we can now call it a horror and not pretend it didn't happen". The release of the report, it seems, is merely the first step in redressing the harm caused.