An open letter to my wonderful late parents and all those who adopt: Christa Ackroyd

I was ten days old when I was adopted and I tried never to look back to the past or ponder unanswered questions, and to move forwards. But this week I was forced to contemplate again that which I had not done for several decades, just as I did when I wrote here about the apology, long overdue from the British parliaments when one by one in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England said sorry for the part the state had played in what amounted to enforced adoption. I said then, as I say now, I didn’t realise how hard it would hit me to hear those who now rule the land apologise for the part those charged with our welfare in the past played in giving hundreds of thousands of young unmarried mothers no option but to give up their babies because the state, the church and other institutions decided it was ‘for the best.’

I too was born in a home for unmarried mothers. It was run by the Church of England. I almost wish I hadn’t watched it, but I had to see if through to the end. One by one the women told their stories and relived the pain they suffered. Their experiences were tragically similar.

The state intervention which funded these institutions and so cemented the belief that these largely unmarried, and often teenage, girls had no right to look after their babies, left them damaged and drowning in regret and shame. For the first time it became obvious why my mum told me over and over again that the woman who gave birth to me had ‘no choice and so never judge her’ because now the painful truth is out. These women were deemed unworthy to be mothers and just in case they fought the system and wanted to keep their child, the powers that be ensured that as only women over the age of 21 were eligible for any financial support, it was impossible.

As I heard the women describe giving birth without pain relief, often alone, of having babies snatched literally from them, of being made to feel dirty and ashamed, one sentence stopped me in my tracks. It went something like this: “These girls,” said one of them, “were largely working class. Their babies were taken from them to give to middle class couples who couldn’t have children.”

So this week, on behalf of of those couples, and particularly my own parents, I feel I have to put the record straight and pronounce them innocent of any wrong doing. It is not a burden of guilt they should carry in this sorry mess. I completely accept that for those women who wanted to keep their babies, it is understandable that, having campaigned for decades to free themselves of the stigmas attached to them, it is easy to accept the narrative that they were just girls who found themselves almost producing children to fill the needs of others. There was no fertility treatment available until decades later.

A simple medical procedure which would be routine today would have meant my own adoptive parents would almost certainly have been able to have children of their own. But that does not make them, or any others in their position, guilty of collaboration. I am absolutely certain the vast majority had no idea. They just wanted a family and one was offered to them. It was a state run solution.

And so to adoptive parents everywhere I want to say thank you. To my own, my life may have been different had you not stepped in, but it could never have been better. The guilt is on society and it’s obsession with women who got pregnant out of wedlock, as they used to say, not yours to carry.

To suggest that money talked, that these were all middle class couples who swept in and, if not with money, bought into a system that meant almost 300,000 babies were adopted in the era I refer to, is doing them a mis-service. They were good honest people who wanted to offer love to a child they were told could not be loved, or at least supported, by those who had given birth to them from the 1940s to the mid seventies. My father and mother were the most honest decent and caring people you could ever wish to meet. They were not posh money can buy you everything kind of people. They had love to give and gave it to a child, who let us be clear, would also have been judged just as harshly if they were, as I was, born illegitimate.

They healed the wounds and coped with the questions with non- judgmental sympathy for the woman whom I always questioned as to why she had given me away. The answer is exactly as they said – she had no choice. I now know how that choice looked in reality, but it doesn’t mean that I wish my life had been different. My birth mother is no longer here to tell her story. Meeting her might have given each of us closure, but I would never have tried to find her while my parents were alive.

And so to all adoptive parents I want to say this. We know as children whose start in life was traumatic we have often not been easy. For me government apologies and this documentary did nothing to ease that trauma. It made me sad for the women judged, their wishes not even considered, and I am truly sorry. But never ever think as adoptive parents that you were not loved, appreciated or absolutely vital in giving us the care and the start in life that at the time would have been impossible. You were not part of the deceit you were the antidote to it. And so mum and dad I may now understand more about what you tried to tell me. I may feel part of the burden of sometimes feeling second best has been lifted, but I have no regrets. That together we overcame what we now know was a shameful part in the history of this country, but this shame was never ours, nor did it belong to the women who gave birth to people like me.

There are no what ifs from me, only grateful thanks for the life you gave me with all its wounded complexities. You loved me. You understood me. You nurtured me. And that is all any child could ever wish for. So no I do not want to rewrite history. You mum and dad wrote almost all my chapters and the story we wrote together had the happiest of endings. I just thought you should know.