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My name is Pien Bos and I'm from the Netherlands.

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I'm a cultural anthropologist and I did a lot of research in the field of adoption, but then from the perspective of the mothers.

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So I work as assistant professor.

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But this research I did as PhD student for the Ratwald University in Nijmegen.

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So you are one of the very few researchers that I know of that is actually doing research on a very invisible group, the birth mothers.

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And can you please explain how you came up with this idea on doing research on these group of people?

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Yeah.

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In the nineties I was working for an adoption agency and in the Netherlands was my first job and I very much believed in adoption as a very good intervention.

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In those days this was the dominant discourse anyway, in society, in the dutch society.

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And I thought, well, there are children without parents and there are parents without children.

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So one plus one is three, I thought.

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And then I worked in this agency and more and more questions raised in my mind, like, what is going on on the other side of the world?

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And there were ideas among the social workers, like about the background of the children.

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But I was just wondering, did anybody ask these women themselves?

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And nobody did.

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So that's the reason why I eventually wrote a research proposal and this was funded by the Ministry of Justice and by the Ministry of research and education from the Netherlands.

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So it was quite a challenge to actually do this study.

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Could you talk about the main challenges that you faced?

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And, well, getting funding is a challenge, but that's what I succeeded with.

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And then the next worry for me was getting access, getting access to the mothers, because people told me, well, nobody wants to talk to you.

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This is a taboo.

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Why should a woman share this with you?

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And you can talk to the social workers so they will give you the information.

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But that was not what I was interested in.

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So that was a big worry for me.

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Do I get access to the mothers?

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Would they like or choose to talk with me and to share this very delicate and sensitive life history?

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And how did you manage eventually to talk to them?

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That's a long story.

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It has to do with some practical things, but also luck.

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And these practical things are not so very interesting.

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But what is important is when I finally got access, these women were very eager to talk with me.

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So once I was sitting down with them, I hardly asked questions.

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They just shared their stories, sometimes several times and for hours.

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So this was.

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I talked with women who were.

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Many women who were in that actually period of their life, that they were carrying a child as an unmarried mother or just delivered the baby.

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So there was a lot of issues going on and there was a lot of panic and very difficult circumstances.

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And they were actually quite happy to share this period of life with me and also with my assistant, who was a professional social worker and who counselled them sometimes.

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So it was not just only very sac interviewing, but sometimes we parked the interview and stepped into another role.

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Today in your presentation, you mentioned a very powerful sentence.

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You said that also in India it is possible to raise a child as a single mother if you stay away from the agencies.

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Can you be more precise on this sentence?

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Yeah.

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What I try to explain today is that the stigma of unmarried mothers in India is really very severe.

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It causes a lot of suffering.

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That's clear.

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I mean, there's no doubt or discussion about this.

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But relinquishing a child, if young mothers, we are talking about teenagers, children themselves.

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If these girls relinquish a child for adoption, this is an irrevocable, irreversible decision.

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It can never be made undone, and the child will live the life of their mother.

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And there is no power anymore to get in touch.

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They are depending on the goodwill of adoptive parents somewhere on the other side of the world.

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So this is a very big intervention in a young life of a child, of two children.

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I also spoke with women who reflected upon that in India, but also in Vietnam and also in the Netherlands.

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And one thing is clear, the lives of these girls or these women, these young women, these lives change.

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They become older, maybe they really become old.

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Sexuality has a different place in the culture when you are old.

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Different meaning they get mature, sometimes they become mother again.

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And one thing is clear, they never forget about this child.

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It always remains their child in their experience.

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And signing a document doesn't change anything about that.

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They have their lifelong worries about a child.

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Did I do the right thing for my child?

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So I think we should be aware of the impact of this intervention.

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And actually, after 20 years, I think we should not do intercountry adoption anymore because it doesn't do right how mothers experience their motherhood.

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And I, they don't experience that.

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They become the ex mother.

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And the mothers that I spoke with who raised their children as unmarried mothers, they did not have an easy life, that's clear.

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But they did not have a new stigma, the stigma of a bad woman, a bad mother who is willing to sell a child.

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That's how people mention it.

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Like a mother who gives her child away.

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What kind of mother is she?

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So they were.

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The motherhood gave them power.

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Power to be proud and to be true to themselves, and it gave them also agency.

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And do you know anything about their children, the status of their children in society, children of mothers, of, of unwed mothers?

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It depended.

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I've interviewed mothers who left their family or sent away, and they were living separate from families who were not in touch anymore, and they were working in the city in households or expert companies or whatever.

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But I also spoke with especially one mother who was raised in a village.

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It's almost one full chapter in my book, with all the layers of difficulties also.

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But she was supported by her parents, and there was a big stigma.

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Indeed.

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But she managed, and she also was proud of herself.

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And people also respected her in a way for doing what she did.