Shame Endured by Females Who Were Only Half Responsible

Two hundred years ago, if you were a female and you were unwed and pregnant, that could have been cataclysmic to your livelihood. Have the current times changed much for the better?

Adoption is a beautiful thing. Today celebrities travel thousands of miles to places like Africa to adopt needy children. There almost seems to be a complete outpouring of support for young, innocent children nowadays who have done nothing wrong outside of being born into a situation that could not sustain them.

Therefore, oftentimes people look for someone to blame. You cannot really blame the children because it wasn’t their fault for being conceived. Meanwhile, the only visible sign of any happenings is a lone woman whose belly eventually starts to show and people know that she is unwed. There may be a few, rare exceptions to that where a woman can get away with not looking pregnant although, I think that they are harder to find.

The notirous mother and baby homes of Ireland and England of the last, few centuries are, in my opinion, a disgrace to womanhood. They should have been labeled prisons because that was, in effect, what they really stood for while masquerading as something humanitarian.

Fortunately, the tide has progressed and assistance is finally being offered to the relatives of those who were unfortunate enough to wind up in one. I can only wonder, “Why now? Isn’t it too late?”

Then, I gather that I suppose equity and benevolence can never be too late. That is the optimistic side of me writing. Although, repairing broken lives, hearts and spirits of those who were effected, which is innumerable, seems to be what this latest development represents, I say that is a positive thing. Although, I ponder whether this changes the attitudes that were the cause for such drastic endeavors to even be established in the first place.

Sadly, there is no direct line to a male or the person responsible for the pregnant female, at least, visibly. The father typically disappeared out from under the consequence and left a female burdened, abandoned, frightened and forced to deal with this hefty situation completely by herself while the powers of society accepted it. This doesn’t seem fair or right.

The truth is that we will never know what happened behind closed doors. We can never say for sure that it was the woman who initiated the event or the male or even if it was mutually decided. We will never know who was being honest, who had ulterior motives and if any steps were taken to prevent a pregnancy.

It saddens me in a way that a huge pit forms in my stomach that we as a world have so easily shifted guilt to any woman when we all know that biology dictates that it takes two to tango. What is even more upsetting is how families were and still are a big part of the paradigm that allows this group to be at fault when they know that everyone is human and that it isn’t right to hold only one accountable.

It is human nature to want to mate and reproduce. It isn’t malfeasance to procreate as long as certain rules are followed and most of us know what those rules are. How it is handled depends largely on the values and lives of those involved. Therefore, we can never assign culpability to the girls out there, at least, we cannot do that in good conscience. But, we have and we do.

What does that make us then? It makes us above them, faultless, hypocritical and lucky. There is no perfect person out there and not accepting the faults of others makes those of us that do this in the wrong.

Fortunately, maybe this can start a whole, new discussion on what we can do to alter this. It is a sociological issue that has long been ingrained and programmed into people whether they realize it or not. However, all it takes is one thing, whether tiny or significant, to alter this into something else. One thing is all it takes.