At the same time that pressure on unmarried women to relinquish their babies is mounting, the question of who is responsible for the thousands of children relinquished is also becoming increasingly unclear. Mothers and children are being crushed in an opa

At the same time that pressure on unmarried women to relinquish their babies is mounting, the question of who is responsible for the thousands of children relinquished is also becoming increasingly unclear. Mothers and children are being crushed in an opaque and chaotic system.

Gertha stands at the door of the Aldegonde orphanage in Amersfoort. It's February 23, 1960, a cold and cloudy day. Gertha's then three-year-old son, Hans, lives in the stately orphanage. She was unmarried when she had him, but she gave him up under pressure from her parents.

She's picking up her son today, she thinks. She has an appointment with the Utrecht Child Protection Council: once married, she can pick up her child. The wedding is in a few days. She's getting married, and her future husband, Hans, acknowledged his paternity on February 11th. The child is legally his son; they'll take him home together.

Things take a different turn. Gertha is told at Aldegonde's door that Hans has already gone to foster care. She can't take him with her and isn't told where he is.

What his mother didn't know at the time was that just five days earlier, on February 18, 1960, the boy had been taken by Child Protective Services to a family in Woerden. Her son only discovered this decades later, when he began researching his own history. His file shows how the events unfolded.

"I was never out of her life," says Hans van Rijssel, now 64. His mother had two more children with the man who recognized him, and Hans has been in touch with them for several years. His half-sister searched for him and found him. "They always knew about my existence. She wouldn't have wanted to give me up; Hansje was always there." He heard from his half-sister that his mother had wanted to pick him up. Before she passed away, mother and son knew each other for six months.

Why the toddler was taken away five days before his mother was supposed to pick him up will likely remain a mystery. The Child Protective Services file has been destroyed, and the one from Huize Aldegonde is also gone. Van Rijssel himself has an idea. "My foster mother worked for the Child Protection Council in Utrecht. I think she said: give me that quickly." He thinks his grandparents didn't want their daughter to pick him up anyway, and that Child Protective Services went along with it. This is especially striking because his mother was already an adult when she gave birth to him. Her parents had no legal say in her decision.

Van Rijssel is not the only child who, once an adult, hears that his biological mother had wanted to pick him up from an orphanage or transition home.

Lies and fog curtains

Dutch Child Protection Councils and organizations involved with unmarried mothers deliberately withheld information from "birth mothers" who wanted to care for their own children. Some women were also not told the truth about their child's whereabouts. This is according to an investigation by Trouw and Omroep Gelderland into the consequences of the adoption law in the Netherlands.

Mothers who wanted to reconsider their often-coerced decision to relinquish their child were, in principle, entitled to do so. In practice, the study shows, the rigged system of Child Protection Councils, residential care facilities, and guardianship councils made this difficult or even impossible. 

Surrogate mothers and foster children

The adoption law seems to have created its own dynamic in the Netherlands, according to research by  Trouw  and Omroep Gelderland. One in which unmarried women were pressured to give up their babies or even, decades later, claim to have been forced to give them up. Estimates of the number of women who gave up their children between 1956—when the adoption law came into effect—and 1984—when abortion was legalized—range from 13,000 to 20,000. This is despite the fact that Fiom (Federation of Institutions for Unmarried Mother Care) mediated for 328 children who had been relinquished in the preceding twenty years. 

In a series of articles, available at  trouw.nl/adoptie , we investigate what went wrong, how it could have gone so wrong, and the impact it has had on people's lives.  The stories from Omroep Gelderland can be viewed here. 

Why women were lied to and the scale of this practice remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that it occurred at a time when unwed motherhood was considered a disgrace and a threat to society. Furthermore, the system of relinquishment and adoption was primarily focused on the interests of foster parents, according to the investigation by Trouw and Omroep Gelderland.

History of the adoption law

This can be explained by the history of the adoption law. While it was introduced in 1956 as a law to protect children, it was primarily the result of a strong lobby by foster parents. They also wanted to become legal parents of children they cared for. They also wanted to eliminate the uncertainty that biological parents could reclaim their child at any time. This had all the consequences, not least for children who were not safe with their biological parents. Other European countries already had an adoption law, the Netherlands being one of the last.

An adoption was officially initiated after a foster family applied for it in court. In practice, the decision had often become unavoidable years before, namely from the moment a child was placed in foster care. When the adoption was abolished in 1974, the Central Adoption Council, which advised the judge on adoptions, wrote that only three percent of applications were rejected. Moreover, the council saw "quite a few cases" where the reason for granting the application was that the case simply could not be reversed.

Also read Jessica Bijvang's story . She found a note in her file stating that while the judge is unhappy with the family's decision, after seven years he has "no choice" but to transfer custody. 

Child Protective Services played a central role in the relinquishment and adoption process. They were required to be notified first when a woman wanted to relinquish her child and to investigate potential foster families.

In practice, this didn't always work out. "We all know the system is a fiction," said Sark, secretary of FIOM (Federation of Institutions for Unmarried Mothers), for example, in 1958 during a meeting also attended by the Child Protection Councils and the Central Adoption Council. According to the secretary, it's impossible to determine whether every family is suitable for taking in a foster child.

Child Protective Services is being given more responsibilities. They were required to be notified at all times of placements of children under six months old to prevent rapid relinquishment. The agency was also needed to remove a mother from custody.

A chaotic situation

While that sounds straightforward, FIOM concluded almost desperately in 1963 that a "chaotic situation" had developed. At the same time, as pressure on unmarried women to relinquish their children increased, it became increasingly unclear who was responsible for the placement of the thousands of children who were relinquished.

Both the Child Protection Councils and Fiom, the foster homes, and the guardianship organizations place children with families. As a result, lists of childless couples who would like to have a baby have been created in all these different places. Some couples are deemed unsuitable by Fiom but are given a child by Child Protection Services. It is striking that the lists of potential foster parents are growing longer, but children are staying in foster homes longer than desired.

Accountability

For these stories, Trouw and Omroep Gelderland conducted archival research at Fiom, the National Inspectorate of Population Registers, and the Gelderland Archives, and spoke with mothers, children, other stakeholders, experts, and researchers. Previous research and explorations into relinquishment and adoption were also consulted. Sylvana van den Braak searched the Fiom archives. The final approval from the Central Adoption Council was obtained thanks to Eugenie Smits-van Waesberghe. 

Several problems play a role in this. First, the University of Amsterdam concluded in 1971 that there was a perverse incentive in the system. Homes suffer from a permanent shortage of funds and are paid per child they care for. Some homes therefore hold children longer than necessary, it is suspected, simply to keep things running.

The second problem is that some organizations refuse to place children with a family until their mother definitively relinquishes them. This puts the children in a kind of limbo, where they cannot or are not allowed to go with their mother, but also cannot leave the home. This in turn leads to a spiral of problems,  because children are "hospitalized"  and therefore less popular.

Backlogs at the various organizations that have to place children and the lack of overview of lists of foster parents also seem to play a role in the long period that children stay in care.

Attempts to curb the chaos 

To curb this chaos somewhat, Fiom proposed a central foster parent register in the early 1960s. The Child Protection Councils blocked it, deeming it unnecessary. This frustrated Fiom. Meanwhile, the various Child Protection Councils had completely lost track. They didn't all see it as their responsibility to screen prospective foster parents, and children were placed in families without their knowledge, even though this wasn't permitted.