My solution would be to offer pregnant underage girls a significent amount of money to give their newborns up for adoption. I believe the "Baby Bonus" heralded a spike in teen pregnancies especially amongst the "welfare family" demographic. $5,000 if you had a baby - WOW! That would buy baby daddy a clapped out Commodore AND enough over for a big TV.

A once only payment of say $15,000 to assist them get their lives together. The conditions - contraceptive implant until they reach age 20 or marry.

As for adoptive parents and adoptees - I have a very large extended family and there are a number of adoptees. Two within the family and 7 external. Apart from one who is alcoholic they are all fine members of their communities, good parents themselves and completely accepted and accepting. Bar one 'internal' adoptee not told his "Aunt" was his biological mother until he was very adult, the others have all been informed of their origin early in life. Most have looked for birth mothers or other kin, two have declined to go there.

Admittedly I am fortunate to belong to a good mob and some adoptees have not been as lucky. I still have good reason to believe however that on the whole, a child adopted into a family so eager to be parents and motivated to provide that child with the best they can is way better off than the one living in a cramped dingy flat with a 17yr old mummy and a new 'daddy' who'd rather the kid wasn't on the scene. Get the picture?

Thank you Brendan O'Reilly for an honest and very well and sensitively presented article. A worthy effort to place this sensitive and troubling issue in perspective.

Capabilities, facilities and societal attitudes have fortunately evolved, but even now there are tragedies where children are failed by the 'system' - being left in abusive or neglectful households (mostly biological rather than adoptive, it would seem) - as support services are stretched or inadequately funded, or where reluctance to remove children, even temporarily, from 'troubled' biological households has become the new policy and philosophy.
Thankfully most children are now significantly better off, though some still fall through the cracks in an imperfect system.
Once born, it is right that society as a whole has a responsibility to provide as best it can for the welfare and future prospects of all our children, but it remains moot whether it is in society's best interest to facilitate a substantial increase in ex-nuptial births. This remains a substantially vexed issue.

It is clear failures were made in the past, and I feel for the parents, families and children involved; but I also feel for the carers, who would have had to harden their hearts to the plight of young mothers without means or support to raise their ex-nuptial progeny. Has anyone a care for the plight of these carers? Their task must have been a very difficult and troubling one.

So many distressing stories; thankfully many are still here to speak of them, have moved on with their lives; perhaps many more would have been lost but for a caring system which was all the same limited in its options; we can only try to do better for all concerned, but responsibility cuts both ways, and there may yet be a limit to society's willingness to absolve 'mistakes' - if some seek to abuse or take unwarranted advantage of the philanthropy and compassion of others.
The 'ghettos' of single parents are a troubling contemporary phenomenon, and we have not yet solved the problem of people living it rough on the streets. Where to from here?

Speech given by the Prime Minister to the House of Representative, March 2063.

"The Parliament apologises for policies and practices that forced the separation of single mother’s from their children by forcing them to return to work once their youngest child turned 8 - regardless of their specific circumstances.

The mothers were betrayed by a system that gave no choice to single mothers but to exist on less than $40 a day if they preferred to stay at home with their children or couldn’t find work.

We say sorry to each of you who grew up thinking your mother was a loser and a welfare bludger.

We don’t like to admit we were mistaken or misguided in thinking that single mothers who can’t or don’t work must be punished and made to suffer.

What we see in the mirror is deeply shameful and distressing because we see all around us the negative social impacts of this mistaken and misguided policy.

This story had its beginnings in a wrongful belief that women who raise their children without a man are little more than fallen women who should be ostracised by decent society.

For this we say sorry."

...Equality for Women has advanced since the 50's as evinced by the past examples of "Child Stealing" ! These days, as men have the right to Father a child, equally so to do women hold the right to parent the child until maturity. The single parent benefit is the essential ingredient of equality for Women and must be defended: So endeth the lesson from history!

Better off if adopted? You have to be joking, or know absolutely nothing about adoption, back then.
Some kids were only ever accepted as unpaid slave Labor, just as soon as the were big enough to hold a shovel, or put the teat cups on a cow, or walk behind the traces, on a horse drawn plough.
Others considered it their sacred Christian duty, to drill their particular bible belief into you, by "ALL MEANS" necessary.
Very few report a completely positive or benign outcome.
Sorry to hear about your ugly childhood Marilyn.
However, you do need to stop hating! Nothing can can change the past! The pages of history, once accurately recorded, can never ever be erased!
Be grateful that you didn't follow that abysmal example!
Truly, there is only just one thing we have absolute control over, and that is the thoughts we care to entertain in our minds, and through them our attitudes.
Given there's simply no percentage in holding onto negative thoughts, which only ever harms the holder, it's better we should always look on the bright or positive side.
Your parents were also victims of their addictions!
Had I not been a natural born optimist, with a spirit not even the harshest disciplinarian could beat out of me, I likely would not have survived, or be one on a large and growing list, who have succumbed to cancer?
A teaspoonful of love is vastly more powerful, than a whole barrel chock full of hate.
And the person you need to learn to love Marilyn, is yourself! [The greatest love of all!]
Be the very best kind and gentle person you can be, in spite of your parents, and their horrible history.
That really is the only way you can thumb your nose, or effectively demonstrate, what you really thought of them, or how much you despise them and all they represented.
Rhrosty.

Great article. It's so rare to read an article by someone who actually tries to understand why people did things in the past rather than just gushing hysteria based on ignorance and half-truths and aimed at furthering an agenda.

And I'm heartily sick of politicians apologising for other people's deeds too. If Gillard wants to apologise she could start by apologising for her lies, for the nearly 300 billion of our money she has wasted and for the most incompetent and dishonest government this counrty has ever seen (Thank god she didn't get her media laws thru or I might not even be able to make this post).