Single Mothers ( - )

Alternative Names

• Unmarried Mothers

Location

Tasmania

Single mothers often struggled to support their babies and to deal with the social stigma attached to their situation. In Tasmania, from the 1890s, rescue homes supported the mother and baby for a year or two but the regimes were often punitive. Increasingly during the twentieth century, married women who could not have children sought to adopt them. In order to meet demand, many single mothers relinquished, or were forced to relinquish, their babies.