Research reveals how post-war adoption laws enabled courts to remove unmarried mothers' parental rights

Last week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer issued a formal apology on behalf of the British state for its role in historical forced adoptions in England and Wales. It is estimated that between the 1950s and 1970s, 185,000 babies were taken from their unmarried mothers.

Dr Bradley's peer-reviewed research, published in the Modern British History journal found that the Adoption Acts of 1950 and 1958 created new caveats for judges to remove parental rights. If a mother had been found in court to be refusing her consent to adoption 'unreasonably', then her right to refuse consent could be removed by the courts. The 'evidence' for this 'unreasonable' behaviour came from the opinions of doctors, who began to argue that the child's future psychological stability would be in peril if they were not formally adopted.

The post-war British state, judges, churches, and the medical community redefined who was not good enough to 'provide' emotionally and practically for the so-called 'illegitimate' child. Namely, unmarried and younger mothers. Over the next two decades, judges increasingly removed parental rights from unmarried mothers on the grounds that they were 'unreasonably' refusing their consent to the adoption of their children. The formal apology that has now been issued for twentieth century-forced adoption practices is testament to the tremendous bravery of, and hard work undertaken by, mothers of adoption loss and adult adoptees.