26 New Zealand Woman’s Weekly
ONE MUM’S EXPERIENCE OF
ADOPTION IN THE 1970sT
he year was 1970. It was
the time of the Crewe
murders, John Rowles’
single Cheryl Moana Marie
was the number-one song, and
police and anti-Vietnam War
protestors clashed outside
the Intercontinental Hotel
in Auckland, where visiting
US Vice President Spiro
Agnew was staying.
Actress Danielle Cormack
and former Green co-leader
Metiria Turei were born. Fewer
than 1000 people were on the
unemployment benefit and only
two percent of working-aged
people relied solely on social
welfare support of any kind. It
would be another three years
before the domestic purposes
benefit (DPB) came into being.
It was also the year a then
20-year-old Pip Murdoch
put her newborn son up for
adoption, signing away any
rights to the baby she named
Nicholas, but who she would
later come to know as David.
Pip is now 69. A trained nurse
and grief counsellor, she and
husband Simon, a former
diplomat, live in the upmarket
Wellington suburb of Kelburn.
She reveals the search for
her son, 21 years after his birth,
in Relative Strangers, a memoir
set during a time of massive
social change and inter-
generational upheaval.
It’s taken her almost a decade
to write, after she ditched the
first draft – “my life generally”- to instead concentrate on a
period that spans growing up
in the 1960s, her pregnancy
and “confinement”, and the
subsequent heartbreaking,
quest to find her firstborn.
Pip grew up in Southland in
a strict, very religious household.
Her father was an Anglican
vicar. Gore, in those days, she
says, was neither stuffy nor
middle-class. “It was a hive
of naughty behaviour – a real
little Peyton Place.”
Still, the prevailing attitudes
were anything but liberal. Pre-
marital sex was something good
girls didn’t do, women wanting
contraception had to give their
fiancé’s name and the date of
the proposed marriage, and
unwed mothers were expected
to hide their pregnancies and
give up their babies.
Pip was a trainee nurse,
flatting and “having a ball”
in Christchurch when she
became pregnant. “They were
party times, it was fun, but it
was also a time of friction
between our parents’ values
and our own values,” she tells.
“Many of us got pregnant,
some got married, some did
what I did. Very few could keep
their babies. It would hardly
ever happen, there was no
financial support and it
was a ‘stain’.”
Worse than that, in the eyes
of many, it was considered sinful;
a threat to the respectability
of a young woman’s family.
David’s father suggested
they marry, but the offer
was politely turned down.
“I think he was genuine in
his offer, but it would never
have worked,” Pip admits.
Instead, she made the
decision to adopt her baby
out. It pains her to reflect on
that decision now and she
very deliberately avoids
saying it was the correct
thing to do. “It was the right
path. It was very much the
mood of the time... It really
was the only option.”
Only Pip’s parents and a
few close friends knew she
was pregnant. Like hundreds
of other young, unwed women,
many of whom were forced to
give up the babies, her absence
was explained away – in Pip’s
case it was glandular fever.
Rather than taking herself
off to a home for unwed mums,
Pip found a sympathetic family,
living in Omarama in the
Mackenzie district, who
took her in.
Her wee baby was born in
Kurow Hospital three days
before Christmas. Pip called him
Nicholas, for obvious reasons,
but never got to hold him.
“They took him straight out
of the delivery room,” Pip tells.
“You weren’t meant to see thebaby after that, but I asked
the doctor if I could, and he
said I could go and see him
but I wasn’t to pick him up.”
Pip returned to Christchurch
and to nursing, then went on
to marry and have three more
children – now aged between
43 and 37. She thought of her
first child often and grieved
for what might have been.
“There was just this emptiness
that you couldn’t fill. I couldn’t
talk about it, even with good
friends. When I went back to
nursing, I’d be looking in prams
and I’d look at the parents
wondering if they had him.”
Changes to the Adoption Actin 1985 opened
the way for
children and birth
parents to find
each other. While
Pip ensured there
was no veto on
David contacting
her, it would be
several more
years until her
own search began.
She doesn’t give a lot away,
explaining that David’s story is
his own, but concedes that
meeting him for the first time
was “something overwhelming
and unique that I cannot
adequately put into words”.
“I had always thought of
him as Nicholas until I
met David, and I had
always thought of him
as a baby until I started
looking for him, and
then I realised I
wasn’t looking for a
baby, I was looking
for a man.” #
Julie JacobsonPip’s memoir on
adoption has been a
decade in the making.It was a long time
coming, but Pip
says meeting
David (left) was
“unique” and
“overwhelming”.PHOTOS: NEIL MACKENZIE • HAIR & MAKE-UP: MIRANDA MILLEN