There was a time in this country, not so long ago, when a particularly nasty view informed public policy. This was that children born outside marriage were in some way genetically defective, writes Mary Raftery.
The structures established to deal with these children and their mothers, funded by the State, were premised on the concept that children who were "illegitimate"(in the language of the day) needed to be treated in a particular way to combat the likelihood that they would inherit their mothers' "immoral" genetic make-up.
In the context of the attack by Kevin Myers in this newspaper on the children of lone parents as "bastards", and on their parents as "mothers of bastards" and "fathers of bastards", it is worth examining what the consequences of this kind of view meant to tens of thousands of people in this country during the 20th century.
Unmarried women who became pregnant usually ended up in mother and baby homes, most run by nuns. There were two types of these homes: one for what were known as "first-time offenders", i.e. those on their first pregnancies; and others for the "recidivists", those who had given birth before. The effective criminalisation of these women by the use of this kind of language was entirely intentional, and was designed to isolate and stigmatise both them and their children.
In terms of the children, the primary target of Kevin Myers' vitriolic abuse, their fate depended largely on whether they were born to "first-time offenders" or to "recidivists". The view was taken that the first category of baby was, subject to a period of careful observation, suitable for adoption. With only a single lapse, their mothers were capable of reformation, and consequently so was the baby.
Those women who became pregnant a second time were considered beyond redeeming, with their babies inheriting their mothers' "immorality". Many of these children were transferred to industrial schools, where they made up around one-third of the numbers.
This identification of a group of children as being almost part of a genetic underclass goes some way towards explaining the extraordinary levels of abuse and savagery which we now know they suffered at the hands of the religious orders who ran the industrial schools. The use of language, the naming of these children as "bastards" and "illegitimate", played a crucial role in separating them from the rest of society, in defining them as being "other", and in exposing them to rape and battery.
While this experience was common to many children within the industrial school system, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, it was the attitude of overwhelming moral condemnation of single mothers and their children which was so crucial in determining the abusive culture of these institutions.
We can take some comfort from the fact that Irish society has now matured to the point where it unequivocally repudiates the attitudes of the past towards lone parents and their children. The recent Crisis Pregnancy Agency public opinion survey showed a resounding 84 per cent of people stating that it is acceptable for a single mother to raise her children alone. Almost two-thirds felt that children of lone parents did just as well as those whose parents were married.
The same survey, and all of the recent birth statistics, do not support the contention, put forward by both Kevin Myers and Dr Edward Walsh of the University of Limerick, that teenage pregnancy is rampant in Ireland. What the figures show is that births to teenage mothers have remained remarkably static in Ireland for the past 30 years, at around 3,000 per annum. What has changed of course is that young mothers now have the option to keep and raise their babies, as opposed to facing the traumas of either adoption or abortion, or even death as in the appalling tragedy of Anne Lovett and her baby in Granard.
We do not in this country have to look to other more extreme examples of the dangers of singling out a vulnerable group of people on the basis of their birth. At a time when the world has again focussed on the horrors of Auschwitz and the Nazi holocaust, we have our own clear lessons from history on the consequences of defining any group of our citizens as being inferior. And this targeting is precisely what happened last Tuesday in this newspaper.
As I can attest from personal experience, The Irish Times quite properly adopts a policy of allowing extensive freedom to its columnists to express their opinions. However, in the case of Kevin Myers this week, a line was crossed between the expression of a controversial view (that state benefits encourage lone parenthood) and a dangerous victimisation of a defenceless group of citizens, based only on the circumstances of their birth.
It is now important that a statement should issue from this newspaper, not because of its use of terms of vulgar abuse, but in order to repudiate the idea that it is acceptable to target for attack any group of people - children, in this case - who are acutely vulnerable, through no fault of their own, to the consequences of what in effect amounts to an incitement to hatred.
mraftery@irish-times.ie