Looking at adoption from the birth mother’s perspective gives the adoptee an idea of the range of circumstances and emotions of mothers who either readily gave up their babies for adoption or who were, and still are, forced or bullied into giving them away.
In the 1950s the shame that an unmarried mother brought to their families surpassed any consideration off the pregnant mother, in many situations young mothers were disowned by their families and were never reconciled. If they did return, they were never encouraged or allowed to speak of what happened to them. For many women in the past the burden of their ‘guilty secret’ was carried to the grave.
An article written appearing in the Guardian newspaper in October 2007 suggested that mothers were further humiliated by being ‘…encouraged to buy a pack of baby clothes to hand over to the adoptive parents of their child’.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/oct/31/familyandrelationships.women
I have made nine blankets each measuring nine inch that signify the emotional suffering of the woman during her nine months of pregnancy and the sense of loss in having to give the baby away at the end of that time. Even among those who didn’t want to keep their baby they too, underwent a degree of loss.
Context for the work comes from two contemporary artists; Tracey Emin and her sewn applique and American artist Mary Kelly who used Latin text in her working titles between 1973 and 2010. By combining these two aspects and using red thread to attach the words written on the canvas patches I have represented the blood ties and trauma.
