The ties that bind

Adoption law is in for a major overhaul but some argue the reforms still don’t go far enough in freeing up information or helping heal old wounds.

- SARAH CATHERALL

For 40 years, Jan Parker kept her child a secret. In August 1968, she gave birth in a Salvation Army home in Dunedin to a girl she hoped would be named Brigitta. She was on her own at the time. Her parents were in the North Island, unaware their 22-year-old daughter was pregnant. They thought she had simply moved south for work.

For the first 10 days of her daughter’s life, Parker was with her in the home for unmarried mothers. She got the chance to hold her, to feed her with a bottle, and to spend time with her. On day 10, the baby was taken away to her adopted family. Parker had one request – that her child would grow up with siblings.

“I wanted her to have a family. That was all I was told – that she would get that. I wanted her to have a happy life. I wanted her to have the opportunities that I felt I wouldn’t have been able to give her,’’ she says.

Now aged 76 and living in Hawke’s Bay, Parker is one of thousands of New Zealand women who gave their babies up for adoption – a practice encouraged for single mothers at the time.

She reflects: “If this happened today, my baby wouldn’t have been adopted. There was no financial support or places for young single mothers like me to go. I had no savings and I didn’t have a job when she was born. Adoption was the only option unless you had parents who could raise the child as their own.’’

Many similar stories have been told to a Ministry of Justice public consultation process, as part of the first overhaul of adoption law in more than 60 years. In 2020/21, 125 babies were adopted in New Zealand, a far cry from the 1970s, when about 4000 a year were given new homes.