An essential and contemporary perspective on historic forced adoptions
NOW AVAILABLE IN THE USA
- This book provides a poignant exploration of forced adoption, revealing its ongoing impact on countless lives and details why the UK Government must act.
- Through a collection of more than 35 raw interviews, Karen shares heartbreaking yet beautiful stories that demand to be heard, shining light on a painful aspect of our recent history.
- Karen's work lifts the veil on the secrecy, shame, and stigma surrounding adoption, offering a rare glimpse into the harsh realities faced by those affected.
A politically charged book about forced adoption in the UK
Taken: Experiences of Forced Adoption seeks to break the silence surrounding the historic forced adoptions that tore apart the lives of thousands of mothers and their children up until the 1980s.
Through painstaking research, first-hand accounts, and heartfelt narrative, author Karen Constantine brings to light the experiences of young women and girls who were institutionalised, silenced, and ultimately stripped of their newborns, alongside the life-long impact on those children who were taken from them.
Discover a groundbreaking exploration of forced adoption that combines heartfelt personal stories with an urgent call for justice. This essential read not only sheds light on a painful chapter of our history but also emphasises the ongoing impact of these injustices today. With compelling narratives and a focus on accountability, Karen’s transformative work inspires change and fosters a deeper understanding of a reality that demands our attention.
Don’t miss the opportunity to engage with this powerful narrative that is both timely and necessary.
Reviews for Taken: Experiences of Forced Adoption on Amazon
Poignant, raw, and essential
This book is one of the most important works I’ve read in a long time. Full of real experiences and heartbreaking realities, alongside poignant healing and a look to the future, Karen highlights how the scandal of forced adoption still permeates and affects our lives today.
Daisy C.
Heartbreaking story that deserves to be told
This book is heartbreaking. It is a beautiful collection of interviews by the author, whose own story is equally worthy of telling.
An important read to understand our (horrifyingly recent) history.
A long overdue book, and the author this important topic justice.
PS.
Informative and full of emotion
Having heard Karen speak at an event I promised I would read the book to increase my awareness of a practise I was blind to. The individual experiences are well captured and put plenty of meat on the bones as to why an apology is essential. Well done Karen for putting this across.
Julie H.
Mother and baby homes and the culture of shame
The women and girls in these homes all too often experienced significant neglect, were also forced into unpaid manual work within the homes, received poor antenatal care and inhumane mistreatment during labour and postpartum.
This way, these women who were made to feel extreme shame, who were very often utterly shunned and othered by their families (and their own mothers in particular), excluded from church and community, separated from workplaces and education, without access to any support, were forced – coerced – into surrendering their babies for adoption.
Both adoption and residency in the mother and baby homes were monetised by way of fees and/or donations to the Church; in some circumstances, the State paid.
Jill Killington lost her son Ian to adoption in 1968 at a time when forced adoptions of the babies of young single women were commonplace. Mothers had to sign legal papers to the effect that it would be unlawful to ever have any further contact with their children. This photo is used on the cover of ‘Taken: Experiences of Forced Adoption’.
About the author, Karen Constantine
Karen Constantine has always believed in speaking truth to power, in making positive change, and fighting for the rights of others, since her incarceration into Father Hudson’s mother and baby home when she was fifteen and expecting her first baby. Taken: Experiences of Forced Adoption is her first non-fiction work. She intends to publish two further books, her memoir, Rattlechops, and When Dogs Barked at Cars, a novel based on a mother and baby home.
Taken: Experiences of Forced Adoption is published at a time when historical forced adoption is gaining wider public attention. The movie, Small Things Like These, released this autumn and starring Cillian Murphy, follows in the footsteps of Philomena, The Magdalene Sisters, The Women in the Wall, Into the Fire, The Removed and The Marian Hotel. ITV News has aired regular reports on the topic and the Movement for an Adoption Apology has stepped up it’s campaigning, seeking the attention of the new Labour government.
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