English speakers say that a birth mother “gives up” her child for adoption. But French speakers say that a birth mother “abandons” (from the verb abandonner) her child.
There’s a world of difference between the two expressions. Giving connotes generosity, whereas abandonment suggests cowardice. We do speak of “giving up the fight”, which suggests surrender in a manner akin to abandoning a struggle. But differences remain: the English expression hints of a struggle put aside, whereas the French expressions sounds a pejorative note, similar to desertion.
France has a long offered preferential options to abortion or infanticide. Under the French revolution, a 1793 law provided for state funding for medical care of women giving birth, continuing “until she be fully recovered from labor” (“jusqu’à ce qu’elle soit parfaitement rétablie de ses couches“).
In France, women giving birth have long been able to opt for anonymity, or, put differently, to opt out of motherhood. The 1793 law mentioned above mandated that “secrecy of the most inviolable sort shall be preserved in all matters concerning her [the woman giving birth]” (“Le secret le plus absolue sera conservé sur tout ce qui la concerne.”).
Today, article 326 of the French Civil Code provides that “when giving birth, the mother may ask that secrecy be preserved as concerns her admission [to a clinic or hospital] and identity” (my translation, emphasis added).
In France today, recourse to secrecy in childbirth is exceedingly rare. Statistics are hard to come by, but about 600 children are born each year to women who do not wish to disclose their identity, out of about 825,000 births per year; in other words, about 1 in 1,375 births.
This French legal option is exceptional in Europe (or beyond, although it exists also in Italy and Luxembourg). I’ve thought of it as a feminist measure or gesture of sexual equality that makes it socially possible for a woman to walk away from unwanted pregnancy much as a man might. Actually, the woman’s position is better, insofar as she avoids abortion, looks after her own health, and enjoys an implicit promise that society will look after the baby.
But secrecy has fallen out of favor in France, and for French women motherhood is becoming socially more an obligation than an option.
This is shown in the common name for the practice, “accouchement sous X“, where “X” denotes anonymity; an English approximation would be “Jane Doe childbirth”. This same kind of phrasing is used for criminal complaints where the identity of a suspect is initially unknown: a “John Doe complaint”, “plainte contre X“. Today, I would argue, in both cases society expresses discomfort with not knowing the identity of X.
The secrecy offered by French law concerns the birth mother, not the child. It is possible for a man to assert paternity and become father to child born to a “Jane Doe” mother who sought secrecy. It is also possible for a mother to change her mind, within two months of giving birth, and assert maternal rights. It is even possible for a mother to relinquish secrecy, years after the fact: since 2002, children born to an unknown mother can ask a medical commission to seek the identity of the birth mother. About 4500 such requests have been made (which represents about 2% of the total number of living children born to unknown mothers), and about half of the birth mothers have been identified; of these, about half have accepted some sort of contact with the birth child.
Social pressure on women to assume motherhood in the context of secret childbirth has been made most strongly by grandparents.
In one case, the parents of a woman who had committed suicide found evidence of a hospital stay; the hospital divulged (perhaps wrongfully, certainly indiscreetly) the reason of the deceased woman’s hospital stay. The grandparents then petitioned the courts to undo the adoption that was then underway, so as to assert themselves parental rights over the child born to their deceased daughter. In 2009, France’s supreme judicial court denied the grand-parent’s petition, preserving the deceased daughter’s request for secrecy and, indirectly, predictability and certainty in the adoption process.
In a widely reported recent case, a set of grandparents sought to establish paternity over a child born to their daughter, who had elected secrecy when giving birth. An appeals court granted the grandparents’ petition. Although news reports tend to focus on the family and the child’s welfare, the decision shocked me, because it undid the birth mother’s choice of secrecy, forced the stigma of failed motherhood on a woman who had chosen otherwise (those in the grandparent’s circle will know who gave birth to the child), and gave rise to a lastingly bizarre family configuration (with grandparents acting as parents and the birth mother sentenced to a daily accusation of inadequacy).
