IRELAND
Irish Times
Mary McCaughey
Thu, Jul 10, 2014
‘Have the men had enough?”
In the Scottish Highlands, where my mother comes from, this was a well-known phrase used by the women at the end of meals before the menfolk went back to the fields. Indeed it remains current to this day and was used as the title of a novel reflecting that kind of society.
It’s a phrase that comes as we wring our hands and lament the hundreds of bodies of babies uncovered in Tuam.
So much talk of the mothers and their babies. So much said about the homes they found themselves in. So many so quick to crucify the nuns for their apparent ineptitude, cruelty or even illegal acts.
Changing attitudes to the “fallen women”, the Philomenas, the Ann Lovetts, have seen them begin to occupy a different space in our cultural context. There is a growing, sometimes grudging respect for the women who have managed to struggle through and beyond what was done to them to become poignant examples of strength and character for our daughters.
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