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The following article was one of the best-read Premium articles in 2024. The story originally ran in October.
When Joss Shawyer was expecting twins in 1969 she came under pressure to agree to give them up for adoption because she was a single mother. This is the incredible story of how she fought back and helped hundreds of other single mothers raise their children themselves.
Joss Shawyer, pregnant with twins, was shown into a room of the Salvation Army Bethany Home in Auckland, along with other expectant mothers.
The class was focused on the fact that those assembled - many of whom were actually girls, much younger than Shawyer, 23 - were unmarried.
In 1969 that was deemed unacceptable, especially for the unborn babies.
The social worker leading the session wrote in large letters across the blackboard: “What can you offer your child?” Nobody responded.
“I remember clearly the shock and anger I felt as I realised the breaking down process was underway,” says Shawyer, who is now 78.
“Finally she asked us to comment. I broke the long resentful silence by saying sarcastically, ‘The answer, of course, is nothing.’”
Shawyer was kicked out and asked not to return. As she left the social worker was writing on the blackboard: “What does a child need - two parents.”
Most in attendance had no means to argue - the domestic purposes benefit (DPB) was yet to be introduced, and ashamed families often wanted nothing to do with a child born out of wedlock.
Shawyer was older. She’d left a job as a restaurant hostess at the Intercontinental Hotel because an obvious pregnancy was unacceptable, but thanks to friends in hospitality, she secured employment at Waipuna Lodge in Panmure.
A month before her twins were born she was rushed to National Women’s Hospital in Auckland with dangerously high blood pressure that was, she says, aggravated by “work, worry and poverty”.
Doctors were clear: her and her babies’ lives were in danger, and she must avoid any physical and emotional aggravation.
Shawyer, however, came under the same pressure to adopt her twins out, despite making it clear she’d never agree to do so.
“I was expected to discuss their imminent and permanent disposal as though this was a normal arrangement to be making. It was assumed that I would be grateful to the staff for solving my ‘problem.’”
One day a doctor pulled her bed curtain back, sat down and, she says, “proceeded to monologue about the pitfalls of single motherhood”. Ignoring her protestations, he explained he wanted more than his four kids, but his wife “found having babies difficult”, she says.
“When I failed to respond he related a horror story about the price of his children’s shoes and then abruptly left. He felt justified in asking for my children - I should have asked him for shoe money, but I was ill and he had frightened me.
“I barely made it to the bathroom before the fear hit my stomach and the retching started. I had tried to banish my nightmares in an effort to keep as healthy as possible, but that doctor, in one casual conversation had triggered them all again. I temporarily forgot I was a person with internal resources.”
Another visit was from a woman who offered to trade a block of flats in St Heliers for her twins. She’d heard about the apparent opportunity from a hospital staff member, Shawyer says.
Her blood pressure spiked again after an unscheduled visit from a white-coated social worker, who cheerily explained she’d come to talk about adoption. Shawyer refused to speak to her.
Practice at the time was outlined in the manual, A Guide to Adoption in New Zealand, written by another social worker who arranged adoptions for the Department of Social Welfare.
It advised: “The more important facts the girl has to consider is what security (emotional and well as financial) she can offer the child, how normal a life she can provide, not only for a baby, but a growing child, and the likelihood of future marriage to someone other than the baby’s father. Her natural love for the baby and all this means to her has to be weighed against the cold hard facts of what the future is likely to hold. The deciding factor has to be not what the mother wants but what she thinks she will be able to give.”
During labour the doctor who’d probed adopting her babies told her, out of the hearing of others, that “she should have thought of this nine months ago”, Shawyer says.
After the births Shawyer stayed in hospital for two weeks. She was discharged with her son Nick only - Josephine stayed in the premature care unit.
In the meantime, Shawyer lived with a couple and cared for their 2-year-old while they worked. Several evenings a week the husband drove her to the hospital, but Shawyer says she wasn’t allowed inside the unit - despite being able to see other mothers inside feeding their babies.
Staff would sometimes bring the wrong baby to show her through the glass, in an attempt to provoke her, Shawyer says.
“I was meant to cry. All mothers cry and get emotional - it’s a hormonal thing, and it was fine when all the married women did it. But if a single mother did it, it was supposed to be some sort of psychosis, and a reason to take the baby. So I made damn sure I never cried.”
When Josephine was six weeks old a paediatrician agreed to discharge her home, which was a just-secured state house in Ōrākei. However, when Shawyer arrived to get her the woman in charge of the unit resisted.
“‘You’re 10 minutes late, so I’m giving this baby to the social worker. If you’d wanted her, you’d have been on time,’” Shawyer recalls being told.
“When she wouldn’t let go of the bassinet, I checked there was nobody else nearby, grabbed the bassinet with both hands and used my hip to knock her away. I didn’t bother being gentle.”
Life on her own with two newborns was hard, but there were acts of kindness - when her neighbours learnt she couldn’t afford a phone they drilled a hole through the shared wall between their units, and installed an extension to their phone on her side.
Others weren’t as supportive. Shawyer was reminded of her place in society when she entered a competition run by the grocery chain Four Square.
Each year the company - whose white-aproned mascot is a Kiwiana icon - gave gifts to babies born on its founding date.
First prize was a car, for the parents of twins (or more) born closest to midday. Shawyer won and was called by a Four Square executive who asked to arrange a photo of the lucky parents standing next to the Skoda Sabre.
“I explained I was a single mother. He left to discuss the situation back at head office,” Shawyer says. “I then received another phone call - the offer was withdrawn.”
(A search of the Herald archives shows adverts had indeed specified the car was free “to the lucky married couple”.)
Shawyer consulted a lawyer and was eventually given a clothes dryer, two teddy bears and a year’s supply of Wattie’s baby food for each infant - 720 tins, total.
“The people I was living with were offended, and said, ‘You should turn it down’. I said, ‘No way’ - it was winter in Auckland, I had three dozen cloth nappies to wash every day.
“The tinned baby food came in handy, as I was so broke that year I ate it myself.”
The start of Joss Shawyer’s activism
The experiences politicised Shawyer. When her twins were 3 she founded the Council for the Single Mother and Her Child (CSMC), which throughout the 1970s helped hundreds of other single mothers raise their children themselves, and resist pressure to consent to adoption.
The council set up two hostels that took in women who had fled both church-run unmarried mothers’ homes and public hospitals.
At the hostel in Kingsland, a tin of cash was kept on top of the fridge to cover the taxis of women arriving with no money. One mother came in the middle of the night, Shawyer says, wrapped in a hospital blanket and after sneaking out of National Women’s when staff were distracted.
CSMC got media attention and published an information booklet, Everything a Single Parent Needs to Know, which helped women understand their rights, including access to the newly-created DPB.
They heard from women whose babies had been taken from them against their will, and about cruel conditions and harsh attitudes from families, church workers and staff in unmarried mothers’ homes and public hospitals.
When the media reported on an incident where an adopted child had died, their office received a flood of calls from distraught women, wondering if that child could be their son or daughter.
In 1976 Shawyer co-founded New Zealand Jigsaw, which compiled a voluntary “matching” register. People gave their details and hoped their missing parent or child would too. The deluge of letters to the organisation were both cautious and heartbreaking.
“I was an unmarried mother 13 years ago and went through the heartbreak of putting my baby daughter up for adoption. Since then I have gone through the anguish you obviously understand,” one woman wrote. “I have three fine, healthy children now, but very rarely go through a day without wondering and longing to know what has happened to her.”
Another woman unsuccessfully tried to get her newborn daughter back. A social worker promised he’d try and get a photo, she wrote, “but I never heard from him again…I just wish I was able to see her and hold her just once more”.
A further letter was from a woman who was 15 when she had a daughter at St Helens maternity hospital in Wellington, under a false name. She had no other children, having suffered miscarriages and the loss of another child.
“I was made to feel so ashamed of my wickedness, to the extent of being forced to live out my pregnancy in another town and be known by another name, by my well-meaning parents. However, I cannot obscure that first birth and now, in more enlightened times, I have no wish to.”
Jigsaw facilitated hundreds of reunions. These weren’t always the longed-for happy endings - sometimes the parent was no longer alive, and even if they were years had been lost together, and relationships could struggle under the weight of deep pain on both sides.
Campaigning by Shawyer and others resulted in a 1985 law change allowing adult adopted people to access their original birth certificates.
Shawyer also worked for the Sisters Overseas Service (SOS), accompanying Kiwi women on trips to Australia from1978-79 to obtain abortions, where access was much less restrictive. The issue was deeply divisive, and the SOS Auckland office was set alight by arsonists.
In 1979 Shawyer published a book, Death by Adoption, that relayed her own experience (some quotes in this article are from the book) and that of other unmarried women, and criticised adoption law and practice.
On legal advice, she omitted the story of her hip-knocking the hospital staffer. The rescinded car from Four Square seemed too trivial to include - both are now told publicly for the first time.
CSMC sent a copy of the book to every MP, followed by a Christmas telegram: “Just to remind you at this time that Mary was an unmarried mother.”
Shawyer and lawyer Robert Ludbrook - who was made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit in 2021 for services to children’s rights - unsuccessfully went to court to try and return children to their mothers, who were pressured to sign adoption papers as soon as 10 days after birth.
Some women were sedated before a signature was finally obtained, Shawyer says. Others couldn’t recall signing their child away - a result of drugs/trauma - or were in a highly confused state, without legal or other support.
The fallout was devastating and lifelong. Some women didn’t survive it - in one case, a mother called Shawyer shortly before committing suicide, after a judge denied her plea to get her weeks-old baby back.
An apology from Four Square, 55 years later
Members of CSMC spoke to journalists and any interested group, including medical schools and Lions clubs.
There could be resistance. Shawyer was once on a panel speaking to a teacher retraining course, and explained why children with single mothers shouldn’t be termed “illegitimate”, when she says a man “stood up and screamed at me, ‘How dare you.’”
In response, another panelist, the late Vapnierka (Vapi) Kupenga, a Ngāti Porou educator and activist, asked for the microphone.
“She gave him his pedigree, first in Māori, then in English. She demolished him. She and I became great friends.”
CSMC’s focus was “to see the inclusion of the single mother into New Zealand society”, Shawyer says.
“It took about 13 years and dozens of interviews by many of us until the goal was achieved. That’s when the phones stopped ringing and the office of the CSMC was able to close. We’d fought some hard battles along the way but eventually won the war.”
One skirmish was with Four Square when the CSMC threatened a national boycott unless the chain widened the eligibility for its birthday prize draw.
“However, rather than include unmarried mothers the Four Square executives cancelled that entire campaign,” Shawyer says.
Four Square now has a different view. After Herald inquiries, Diane Clark, head of marketing for the chain, now owned by Foodstuffs, contacted Shawyer to apologise.
“It’s because of crusaders like Joss, [that] society began to rethink its views on mothers and marital status,” Clark says. “Today, Four Square is a proudly inclusive organisation and while we can’t change past actions, we can learn from them.”
The long fight for recognition and understanding
Shawyer now lives in Australia with her husband Tamati Taihuka. Her son Nick lives in the United States with his wife and children, 19 and 24.
Josephine passed away from breast cancer in April 2020 in Tauranga, soon after New Zealand’s borders shut because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Shawyer’s adopted country - she now lives in Cairns - has been more willing to acknowledge the harm of the so-called “baby scoop” years, from the 1950s into the 1980s.
In 2013 the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a historic apology, following a Senate inquiry that found as many as 250,000 mothers were affected, many of whom were pressured, deceived and threatened to give up their babies.
“We say sorry to you, the mothers who were denied knowledge of your rights, which meant you could not provide informed consent. You were given false assurances. You were forced to endure the coercion and brutality of practices that were unethical, dishonest and in many cases illegal,” Gillard told an audience, many in tears, in the Australian Parliament’s Grand Hall.
“We apologise to the sons and daughters who grew up not knowing how much you were wanted and loved. We acknowledge that many of you still experience a constant struggle with identity, uncertainty and loss, and feel a persistent tension between loyalty to one family and yearning for another.”
Public awareness grew in the same year with the release of the Oscar-nominated film Philomena, about the forced adoption of babies in Ireland.
Survivors in New Zealand have battled for official recognition. In 2016 Maggie Wilkinson petitioned Parliament to undertake a broad and full inquiry into forced adoption, and acknowledge the pain and suffering caused.
Wilkinson and other women gave emotional accounts of their own loss to the Social Services Committee, but a majority of its members reasoned that, “although we do not agree with many adoption practices from the 1950s to the 1980s, we note that these practices reflected the social values and attitudes of the time.”
In 2018 the new Labour-led Government ordered an inquiry into the abuse of children in state care. Wilkinson and others successfully lobbied for the terms of reference to be widened to include faith-based institutions.
The long-awaited report of the subsequent Abuse in Care Royal Commission was released in July this year, and included a section on unmarried mothers’ homes, run by the Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian churches and the Salvation Army.
“Young girls and women were subjected to verbal abuse, physical abuse and forced labour, medical abuse during pregnancy and childbirth, and psychological and emotional abuse through being coerced or forced to adopt out their babies,” the inquiry concluded.
“The demonisation, dehumanisation and subsequent abuse of girls and women in the homes were justified or reinforced by religious beliefs…their children were seen as in need of rescue and redemption by being adopted to respectable families.”
Women told the inquiry of being starved in an effort to keep unborn babies small so deliveries were more straightforward.
One mother recalled being left alone to labour for three days, and then forced to give birth lying on her side, so as to not catch a glimpse of her baby. A 14-year-old was transferred to Auckland Hospital and slapped by a staff member during labour. Her baby was removed straight away.
The Salvation Army and other groups that ran the homes participated in the inquiry.
In 1969, the year Shawyer attended the antenatal group at the Bethany hospital in Auckland, records show 130 single mothers gave birth there.
Of those births, 78 resulted in adoptions and 52 babies were kept by their mothers or their families, a Sallies spokesman told the Herald. Another 125 deliveries were to married mothers.
“The Salvation Army operates in a coextensive manner to society and reacts and responds to the needs of those who fall through the gaps - sadly, this was often women and children. The first maternity Bethany hospital was opened in Auckland in 1897, because of the growing realisation that single mothers had few options opened to them,” the spokesman said.
“It was not the practice of the Salvation Army to pressure single mothers-to-be to adopt their babies out, but we acknowledge that in the society of the closed adoption era this was thought best for both the mothers and their babies. Single mothers cared for their own babies at Bethany and they were not kept apart.”
Adoptions were overseen by the State, particularly after the 1955 Adoption Act, he said, and for decades the Sallies provided a service to help reconcile mothers and their children.
“A significant number of referrals to Bethany Hospitals came from the birth mothers’ parents, who often played a decisive role in influencing the decisions made about both the mothers and their babies. In many cases, it appears that the parents’ involvement may have unduly influenced the course of action often taken.”
Public hospitals’ role in forced adoption
Huge numbers of women who lost children to adoption experienced abuse and coercion in public hospitals, Shawyer says, and they must be explicitly included in the formal Government apology, to be delivered by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on November 12.
That view is echoed by Kawerau resident Kaaren Dunn, 78. When she was pregnant at 18 her family contacted the Salvation Army, and Dunn was eventually referred to a private obstetrician and gynaecologist in Nelson, who arranged an adoption.
During her “confidential pregnancy” Dunn moved from Auckland to Nelson and boarded with a family she didn’t know.
“They basically treated me like a servant - I had dinner with them one night a week. The rest of the time I cleaned and looked after the kids. It was very isolating.”
In 1965 she was admitted to a public hospital to give birth, and put in a room by herself.
“The way the deliveries were done then, they were done under general anaesthetic, so you didn’t actually see the baby. They were taken away straight away. My understanding is the adoption had already been arranged.”
Dunn stayed in hospital with a debilitating infection. When she’d recovered enough to walk she searched for her daughter, who she could hear crying.
“All the other babies were out, because the women were feeding them…I went to get her, and the nurse stopped me in the doorway.”
Ten days after the birth Dunn was escorted to a room and told to sign adoption papers, and swear on a Bible that she’d never try and find her child. Many years later she met her adult daughter, but both women carry the trauma of separation.
“The hospitals have got a lot to answer for in terms of their involvement with adoption.”
The Royal Commission of Inquiry covered parts of the health system, like psychiatric facilities, but general hospital admissions were specifically excluded.
A Ministry of Health spokeswoman told the Herald it “acknowledges the possibility of harm as a result of medical care provided in the past”.
“The ministry recognises that people receiving health treatment and care were, in the vast majority of cases, provided with what was seen as care which was in their best interests as a patient.
“The ministry also acknowledges that standards and guidance have changed over time. Treatment and care provided in the past is best assessed by the standards and guidance applied at the time, which often takes considerable expertise as has been demonstrated by the recent Royal Commission of Inquiry.”
Erica Stanford, the lead minister for the government’s response to the inquiry, says that, as a mother, it was “incredibly confronting” to read about the experiences of the mothers who submitted to the inquiry, which was independent of the Government.
“I understand the matter of forced or coerced adoption was canvassed during the course of the inquiry and I understand the adoption community is disappointed this didn’t feature more prominently in the final report or have any specific recommendations. It’s not possible for me to comment on why this was, as this was a matter for the Royal Commission.”
A select group of survivors have been asked what should be included in the PM’s apology, Stanford says, which is being developed.
Shawyer will be listening on November 12, including for what isn’t said.
“If the Prime Minister ignores the tens of thousands of women who were in public hospitals, he’ll retraumatise every single one who is still alive. And most are,” she says.
“It’s just going to make it worse.”
Nicholas Jones is an investigative reporter at the Herald. He was a finalist for Reporter of the Year at the 2024 Voyager Media Awards, and has won numerous national media awards for his reporting and feature writing.