Scottish mothers who endured the forced adoption of their babies have said an national apology for their losses was “not enough” and called for deep reforms to allow them to heal from the “atrocity” of being separated from their children.

The Movement for Adoption Apology in Scotland has stressed calls for much-needed mental health support for mothers and changes to the management of adoption records, which remain closed for 100 years to parents.

The campaign has also called for a permanent memorial to those affected, with adoption often presented as the only option, both by many families and health professionals, given social attitudes of the day towards unmarried mothers. Many women have spoken of a lifetime of shame, trauma and secrets that followed.

It is estimated around 60,000 women in Scotland were affected by such adoptions, with the period between the 1950s and early 1980s now in sharp focus.

Jeannot Farmer, 65, of MAA Scotland, spoke out as the Scottish Government announced it would start collecting experiences of women with a view to establishing support and action required.

Dear friends, when Florin Müller's therapist Hanne Kloth contacted us to introduce us to this very special young man, we pricked our ears. Because Florin wrote a children's book as an autistic child: " The Brave Little Fireman ". It's a book about his own story. And that's pretty moving.

" The Brave Little Fireman ".

In 1998 he was adopted by a German couple after living in dire circumstances in a Romanian children's home for four years. Florin uses sign language and uses assisted communication to write things he cannot express with them. He only needs a touch on his knee to be able to write.

In 2014 he graduated from a distance learning school. In the same year his first book was published, followed by two more. He took part in poetry competitions, where he was repeatedly among the prizewinners. Today, Florin is also a frequent speaker at training courses, readings and congresses because he loves to discuss his problems with people.

Florin, you were adopted by a German couple in 1998...

A desperate need to know her roots led a young woman from Netherlands to fly down to a nondescript village in Salem.

Coimbatore: What happened next was nothing short of a fairytale. The visit to Poosaripatti village in Kadayampatti Taluk in Salem district turned out to be life-changing for 23-year-old Amada (Amudhavalli), who, found her biological mother, who incidentally shares the same name as her daughter.

The circumstances behind her adoption tale were revealed to Amudha after the emotional reunion. Her poverty-stricken mother had to give her away when she was just 11 days old, in the care of a missionary in Salem in August 1998. Soon after, the baby was adopted by a couple from Netherland.

“It was the most painful decision of my life and one that I regretted throughout. I was constantly haunted by her memories,” the mother said. She works as a domestic help. She had to resort to the extreme step and give away her second girl child after her drunkard husband deserted the family.

The young Amudha, who grew up as a citizen of Netherland, was often plagued by identity crisis in a family of white people, and this triggered her need to look for her biological parents. “I only knew the name of my parents and my birth place through my foster parents. Determined to meet them, I came down to Chennai all alone from Netherland. With the assistance of a guide, I gathered information from Salem Government Hospital and managed to track down my family. It was difficult. But I am glad to have met them at last and am basking in love. It has been a dream come true moment,” said Amada, who runs a bouquet shop in Netherland.

COC Netherlands wants Minister Franc Weerwind (Legal Protection) to present a multi-parent law this year. The interest group of the LGBTI community advocates this in a letter to the new minister, also on behalf of four other organizations.

The multi-parent law should ensure that children can have several legal parents and not a maximum of two, as is currently the case. This law is part of COC's Rainbow Agreement, which the new cabinet intends to implement in accordance with the coalition agreement.

"Children have the right to a good legal relationship with all their parents, whether there are one, two, three or four," says COC chairman Astrid Oosenbrug. "There is a wonderful opportunity for Minister Weerwind to arrange this quickly and we will be happy to help him with that."

Gender Registration

COC Netherlands also argues in the letter to Weerwind that every Dutch person should be able to easily change the gender registration in the passport to an 'X' instead of 'M' or 'V'. This is for people who, for example, do not feel like a man or woman or who do not want their gender to be included in their passport. D66 MP Lisa van Ginneken recently submitted a proposal on this point.

Poverty had forced her mother to give Amuthavalli for adoption when she was just eleven days old. Now 23, Amuthavalli learned about her past recently and came down from the Netherlands to meet them.

SALEM: Tears of joy rolled down the cheeks of Amuthavalli on Thursday when she met her mother for the first time. Poverty had forced her mother to give Amuthavalli for adoption when she was just eleven days old. Now 23, Amuthavalli learned about her past recently and came down from the Netherlands to meet them.

Amuthavalli is the second child of R Amutha and Ranganathan, a resident of Dasasamuthram near Kadaiyampatti. Her elder sister Jeniffer is 25 years old.

Since Ranganathan was addicted to liquor which added to the family's financial woes, Amutha gave Amuthavalli to a missionary in Salem, in 1998, for adoption when she was eleven days old. A couple from the Netherlands adopted Amuthavalli and took her there. She completed schooling and is running a flower boutique. Recently she came to know about her past and expressed her wish to meet the biological parents. Her adopted parents gave consent, and Amuthavalli landed in Chennai on Tuesday.

Accompanied by a guide (she knows only Dutch language), she travelled to Salem and collected details of her parents from the missionary. She went to Dharmapuri and was told that her father Ranganathan died long ago and that her mother Amutha was staying at Dasasamuthram in Salem.

The LGBTQ+ rights group COC Netherlands wants Minister for Legal Protection Franc Weerwind to present a multi-parent law this year. The group advocated the law in a letter to the new minister on behalf of itself and four other organizations.

The multi-parent law would make it possible for children to have several legal parents––not just a maximum of two, as is currently the case. This law is part of COC Netherland's Rainbow Agreement, which the new Cabinet wants to incorporate into the coalition agreement.

"Children have the right to a good legal relationship with all their parents, whether there are one, two, three, or four," said COC Nederland chairperson Astrid Oosenbrug. "There is a wonderful opportunity for Minister Weerwind to arrange this quickly and we will be happy to help him with that," Oosenbrug said.

The letter also asked that every Dutch person be able to easily change the gender registration in their passport to an “X” instead of “M” or “F.” This option could be, for example, used by nonbinary people and those who do not want their gender included in their passport. Lisa van Ginneken from the D66 party recently submitted a proposal about this.

The interest groups represented in the letter also requested good surrogacy regulations and improvements on gender registration laws. In addition, the organizations propose to make intercountry adoption possible again from countries where no problems regarding adoption have been identified. The government stopped intercountry adoption in February 2021 due to severe abuses in several countries.

A girl child is not property that can be donated, the Bombay High Court (Aurangabad

Bench) observed during a bail hearing after it noticed a 'danpatra' according to which the

rape victim's father had allegedly donated her to a self-proclaimed godman.

Justice Vibha Kankanwadi directed the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to ascertain if

the teen was fit to be declared as a 'child in need of care and protection' as contemplated

The life paths of adopted children since the post-war period have been researched at the Technical University of Dresden. A conversation about roots and well-being.

Adelheid Müller-Lissner conducted the interview with the historian BettinaWärmer from the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism at the Technical University of Dresden. Heater heads the project “Belonging. The History of Child Adoption 1945-2000”. The team is still looking for parents who adopted children between 1955 and 2000 and people who were adopted during this period as study participants (contact: adoptionsstudie@tu-dresden.de ). Further information on the research project at: https://hait.tu-dresden.de/ext/forschung/forschungsprojekt-5149/

Ms.Wärmer, one focus of your project on the history of adoptions in post-war Germany is the evaluation of individual adoption stories. What makes these stories interesting for historians?

They give us an idea of ??how social ideas about family, identity, origin and foreignness changed in the second half of the 20th century. The story of Anneli Schinkel, who came to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1982 as Kim Kyong Jo and later wrote the book “Seidentochter”, shows this on the subject of “foreign adoption”.

She was adopted as a baby in the early 1980s, came to Korea for the first time in 2005 at the invitation of the local government, met her biological parents there and dealt with the tension between biological origin and cultural imprint.

Women who were historically forced into giving up their children for adoption are being asked to share their experiences. An estimated 60,000 mothers in Scotland had babies adopted simply because they were unmarried.

Lisa Rolland was living in Edinburgh in 1982 when she became pregnant at the age of 16.

Still a schoolgirl, she remembers her GP's reaction to her pregnancy was to say: "Who's been a silly girl then?"

"I felt so shamed," she said. "[I thought] I have obviously been bad, I have done something bad. I felt very isolated."

She was unmarried and says the pressure on her to give up her newborn son for adoption was so great, she could not stop it.

Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas' baby born through surrogacy has restarted debates about the practice. Why do we think there's only one way to be a mother?

“Motherhood is a state of being which has, from time immemorial, been defined by a set of cliched, internalized words that are as powerful as they are evocative. Woman, womb, mother…. In our minds, the creation, sustenance and nurturing of life hinges on the blending of these words into synonymity.” I wrote these words in in the preface to my 2014 book Baby Makers: The Story Of Indian Surrogacy, and went on to ask whether being a “mother” necessarily includes the whole gamut of actions like conceiving, carrying and bearing a child. What if one cannot conceive or bear a child for some biological reasons, or chooses not to for personal reasons? Does that make her less of a woman? Can she not still be a mother?