The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History

In this paper, I will investigate four key questions relating to the rhetoric used to talk about Irish unmarried Mothers and their experiences. How did the rhetoric of the Catholic Church characterize the unmarried mother and influence her treatment? How did the state initially speak about unmarried mothers and did Catholicism influence this diction? How did this written description in law shape the experience of mothers like Mary? How do statements made in the Final Report of the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes continue this legacy of demeaning government reference to the unmarried mother? I will bring together the social and legal history through analysis of social discourse and subsequent laws. I will attempt to answer this using evidence from the Irish Government’s archive, The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, and publicly available witness statements. Analysis of primary sources, with these questions in mind, highlights a planned home system justified through demeaning characterization of the unmarried mother in religious and government communications.