IRELAND
The Journal
Cianan Brennan
THE DUBIOUS NATURE of the process surrounding the adoption of Irish children by American citizens in the 1950s has come to light with the publication of foreign policy papers dating from that decade.
The documents, which range from summaries of meetings to communiqués between civil servants to briefing notes for ministers, show a bureaucratic system that was entirely hands off and saw the adoption of Irish children born outside of marriage by foreign citizens as a fundamental ‘good’.
The papers detailing these adoptions are contained in Documents on Irish Foreign Policy Volume X, which covers the years 1951 to 1957, as published by the Royal Irish Academy.
At that time, as many as 10 Irish children a month, the vast majority of them born outside marriage and as a result resident in Catholic institutions, were being adopted by Americans. Some 330 such children left these shores between 1950 and 1952, with such records only being kept from the former date.
This trend was far from secret, and indeed was openly derided in the British press.
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