Catholic Church.

I had to be churched before I could visit my Grandmother. This was in 1968. When I had my next child in 1969, a vicar came to the hospital and churched those who wanted it in the day room. Gran was Greek Orthodox and apparently they could not attend church until 1 year after the birth of a child.

Anniebach

Women in 2021 condemning women of 50 years ago and earlier.

I don't think that is true. Most of us have pointed out that these were different times. That, however does not mean we can condone the actions even if we try to understand the circumstances.

AGAA4 - Your experiences are shocking. Now I'm wondering if my mother was "churched" after she had us, if this was a catholic thing as well. She never mentioned it, in spite of having a bit of a love/hate relationship with the catholic church. She was always telling me women were treated as second class citizens and St Paul was a misogynist, whilst simultaneously going along with a loads of it.

vampirequeen

It wasn't just the Church. The State was complicit too. It was a State/Church partnership. Even now the State is covering up for and protecting the Church.

Indeed.

I understood the original purpose and was thankful it had moved on .

I had children in the early 1970s. The parish priest who baptised DS when he was three weeks old, never even mentioned churching, although I had already made the decsion to refuse if it was offered, because I understood what its original purpose was.

I remember my mother being churched after my youngest sister was born in 1950.

I had to be churched before they would christen my son in the 60's. This was a C of E. It was a very humiliating experience having to repent for my sin of begetting a child. The three of us undergoing this were all married women so to the church sex was a sin whether you were married or not. But only a sin if you were a woman. No men were required to repent.

GillT57. Nuns are women

Not going to talk about the RC church - but just to confirm that churching was common in the CofE when I was a child (50s) but I was told it was to give thanks for the safe delivery of mother and child.

What is SM please not on list of acronyms. Incidentally have noticed a few occasions where the acronym used is not on the list. Who is responsible for adding new ones?

No superstition, no thought of being unclean, but to give thanks
The same as Anniebach and no threats of hell and damnation to either me or the baby!

One was called 'churching' where a new mother was considered unclean and sinful, even though married, and had to go through a blessing called churching before she could resume social life.
Peculiar to the Roman Catholic Church, unheard of in Cof E

We were C of E and my mother was rather surprised when I went out visiting after DC1 was born without being churched. That was in the 1970s.

In some places, I think India is one, girls having their period are banished to an animal shed for the duration.

In the late 60s I rented a room in a house where other girls lived. A girl arrived from the country and didn't mix or speak to any of us.One day she left her door open and on the bed was a case filled with baby clothes. There was a large convent in the next street and we presumed that was where she went the next day.

Terribull The reforms of the 19th century, which moved from treating mental illness as a public entertainment and/or incarceration believed, before drugs or cures of any kind were available, that the mentally ill would benefit from living in good quality caring institutions built in the wuiet of the countryside where the air was pure and fresh, which is why so many of them were built round London on heaths and downs. I lived both in north Surrey and East Berkshire where these building were not uncommen. For some years I lived within an alarm sound of Broadmoor.

Most of these buildings were magnificently and expensively built, with chapels and theatres and surrounded, often by their own farmland. This is why they are now turned into (expensive) flats, surrounded y housing estates.

From the quality of the care they were prepared to lavish on those with mental disabilities, they, within their period showed far more concern for these people than we do today.

I suppose I should have added those "mental hospitals" weren't under the auspices of the catholic church, but the young women were still locked up, as Monica pointed out, for what what was considered a social transgression. I think I have nevertheless read about catholic mother and baby homes in England, possibly they weren't so prolific as they were in Ireland, Ireland being predominantly catholic.

Yes those who say it happened in England too, you're right. I grew up in a town in Surrey that had a lot of mental institutions/homes as they were known then. All closed now, mostly turned into flats. One of my close friend's mother was a psychiatric nurse and all sorts of people were in these places who shouldn't have been, such as young women who became pregnant outside marriage, incarcerated in such places for years deemed mentally unstable. Maggie O'Farrell wrote an excellent book, "The Disappearance of Esme Lennox" on that very theme.

An extremely delicate topic. I converted to Catholicism and used to attend church when I married a practicing Catholic. Over the years I have read articles and watched programmes on various aspects of the Catholic Church and some have left me horrified that children and young women were treated so inhumanely by those claiming to be religious and following God's word. They have been inexcusably slow in dealing with pedophiliac priests, to name just one issue they need to address.

I would add, although I am not an expert on the subject, that I think the regimes in the Irish Institutes were at their most severe in the early 20th century and specifically after the partition of the country in 1921.

My grandfather, the illegitimate son of a catholic factory worker, born in Ulster in the 1880s, seems to have always been brought up within his extended family and I have no reason to think that his mother was ever institutionalised when he was born. I do wonder whether this was because he was born in Ulster, not in the area that became southern Ireland.

I don't see anyone on here condemning the women of 50 years ago Annie, in fact quite the opposite.

I remember my MIL saying that our children were illegitimate as her son and I had not been married in a Catholic church. That was in the early 70s.

paddyanne There were certainly mother and baby homes of all varieties over the UK and the regimes in many of them, regardless of religious affiliation, would horrify us now, but they were not embedded within a community that was so at one with those that ran the homes. Deaths could not be unaccounted for, girls were not kept in them for years with no way of getting out or escaping.

Having said that, women were sometimes committed to mental homes after having an illegitimate child, but this was not a religious matter, once again, simply a projection of attitudes in society at the time.

In England and Wales there were many pregnant girls in
mental hospitals.

Monica I beg to differ there were certainly homes like these all over the UK ,

Women in 2021 condemning women of 50 years ago and earlier.