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cultural difference?
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.
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.
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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!"