IRELAND
Irish Times
Jacky Jones
Tue, Jun 17, 2014
Why are we so shocked about the 796 infants and children who died in St Mary’s mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway? The Sunday World referred to Ireland’s Holocaust, killing fields, and Cambodia. The Daily Mirror had a story entitled “My pals are buried in septic tank.”
This ignorant commentary, implying that there was something sinister about the deaths of children in mother-and-baby homes, is no help to anyone, especially the women whose children died in these institutions.
So far, no child health expert has reminded us that high infant mortality rates were normal for certain groups of people in Ireland until the 1970s. This was not right, but neither was it sinister.
Children died in mother-and-baby homes for the same reasons as those who died in Dublin’s slums: poverty and their mothers’ low status as citizens.
The rate of infant mortality among Travellers was about five times the national average. Children from poor families were four times more likely to die before their first birthday. Unmarried mothers were pariahs, so infant and child mortality rates in mother-and-baby homes were probably about 10 times the national average.
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