cultural difference?

[kindkit]

I've started watching the Danish TV series Dicte, about a crime reporter who keeps getting entangled in her own stories and ends up helping the police solve crimes. (The police, on the whole, would rather she stopped.) So far it's a pretty mediocre show, but Lars Brygmann (aka Thomas LaCour from Rejseholdet) is in it.

Anyway, in the fourth episode of S1, it's publicly revealed in a rival newspaper that Dicte had a son when she was 16 and, under pressure from her parents, gave him up for adoption. The newspaper treats this as a dark secret, and so does almost everyone Dicte knows, including her daughter. This surprised me, because as far as I'm aware hardly anyone in the modern US would think that a woman who'd made this choice was "an unfit mother" or a bad person. And in the US media, if a teen mother gives away her child, it's usually presented as a good decision, as almost heroic.

I'm hoping someone can tell me if this is a matter of cultural differences (a European or Nordic or Danish stigma against giving up a child for adoption) or if the show is being unrealistic in order to create drama.

Comments

[kerkevik_2014]

Women being shamed for giving up their children?

Pretty much universal :-(

[kindkit]

Is it, though? I mean, I have no personal experience of the situation, but people's reactions on the show were absolutely not what I would have expected based on the way adoption is talked about in the US.

[lilacsigil]

I have to agree with kerkevik_2014 on that one. If she didn't want a child why didn't she have an abortion? If she didn't want to do that, why didn't her family support her, or why didn't she try to raise the child? Was she on drugs? Did the state have to take her child into care because she was abusing or neglecting the child? The assumptions are very different.

[kindkit]

So, even if the mother was 16 years old, as on the show, she'd still be perceived as having done a morally dubious thing? That seems really harsh to me, and I guess reinforces kerkevik_2014's point that women get punished somehow no matter what.

[lilacsigil]

Well, it definitely isn't fair! And it's not like the income support is particularly great, either. But the usual narrative is that if a woman chooses to have the baby she is planning to keep it, so then if she doesn't something has gone wrong (and since she's not just female but a mother, it's probably her fault).

I think some of that is the relative lack of stigma on abortions, but there's also the effect of the Stolen Generations, and a lot of single mothers from 1973 and earlier who had their babies forcibly taken at birth and adopted out. Both groups have received formal Parliamentary apologies, so the idea that it's terrible to take a baby from their mother except in dire circumstances has been strongly reinforced over the last decade.

[st_aurafina]

I've only seen one episode but from the snippet they gave us at the start, I assumed that her parents' religion would have factored into the shaming - I don't know how Jehovah's Witness are viewed in Denmark, but over here they're seen as a bit cultish and odd.

I wonder if the scandal of it is related to how much more parental support she would have received in Denmark, as compared to the US? If it's easier to raise a child, maybe it's worse to give your child away, even if you're a teenager?

Also, it's a more rural area - maybe it's more conservative? I know that wouldn't explain her daughter being scandalised, though.

But yeah, shaming women for anything? Always the easiest option. Whatever she did, I'm sure it would have been made to shame her in some way.

[kindkit]

It seems unfair that she'd be blamed for her parents' religion, but of course that sort of thing happens all the time.

I'm definitely getting the sense that societies that make it easier for a young/single parent to raise a child then make up for it by demonizing those who choose adoption instead. I'm still surprised at the vehemence of the reactions on the show though. Dicte's colleagues--professional journalists!--are all scandalized, and someone literally says to her, "What right do you have to judge? You're the woman who gave away her baby!"

[the_rck]

I think that, in the US, the dark secret wouldn't be having given the child up for adoption but having had a child out of wedlock. The giving up for adoption can be read, from certain points of view, as a heroic penance for the sin of having had sex.

I suspect that part of the reason our welfare system is set up the way it is is that single mothers who keep the child(ren) are seen as having done something terrible without having had the grace to apologize/atone for it.

[kindkit]

*nods a lot* I'm getting the sense that the US is generally pro-adoption because of the stigma of abortion and the perceived "shame" of receiving welfare benefits (plus the increasing unavailability/inadequacy of those benefits). Whereas some other parts of the world make it easier for a single mother to raise a child if she chooses to have it, but then stigmatize her if she allows it to be adopted. So, everybody sucks.