Kate, 34, contacted Home Truths via the website to tell us about how her mother, Stella, in the mid 60s opened up their family home to welcome in pregnant teenagers who'd been banished by their communities to have their babies away from the disapproving gaze of family and neighbours... both Kate and Stella came into the studio to talk about their experiences ..
Stella: "Some of the girls were rejected, but in other cases the parents wanted the best so they’d come and see whether I was suitable to look after their daughter. Once we’d chatted, and they knew she was going to be all right, she’d come with me and stay until several months after the birth of the baby."
Kate: "I don’t think I really remember the girls being pregnant. I was about 4 when it all started. It was just an extra person round the house, someone to play with … I didn’t mind my mother’s attention going to them, because they had to eat extra greens!"
Stella: "When the girls first came, it didn’t show that they were pregnant. To my girls, it wasn’t an issue that society had cast them out, or whatever, they were just girls - who’d just come to stay and we were going to have the best possible time we could have - there was heartache but there were lots of laughs .. Anything the girls and their dad did, "my other girls" did as well."
But why did Stella make such a considerable and continous committment to the girls?
Stella: "I’d been there before them - I was fortunate because I married Kate’s dad - but I knew the heartache of early pregnancy from how I was treated in the beginning. I was banned from the family home. I had to find somewhere where people didn’t know me. I lived in a flat on the moors on my own, until my husband Eddie came to join me... It was a dreadful time."
Stella was advised to go and stay with someone as a ‘member of the family’
Stella: "I went to a very, very grand house, to meet the lady who was going to 'take me in'. Three other girls were there who slept in bunk beds, in an attic, and I mean an attic, and had huge eyes and pale faces - they were like terrified animals. I wouldn’t even stay for a cup of tea! I vowed I'd never, ever let girls be treated like that."
Kate: "I only knew about my mother’s past in my late teens, and I’m really proud of my mum, and for keeping me and working hard to give me all the benefits I have."
What had Stella's relationship been with her own mother?
Stella: "We'd never been close, but not long before she died she came to stay, and, unexpectedly, she, "For the first time in your life I understand you and I quite like you. Some time after she'd died, I discovered my mother had also had a baby when she was young. He was adopted. This discovery cast light on her mother’s harsh attitude to me when she I was pregnant with Kate. I was a dreadful reminder - she felt she couldn’t deal with it and the fact that I was determined that Kate was going to have a good life with me …"
