Imagine opening a message on social media, finding it contains a wedding photo of people you don’t recognise and being told that one of the bridesmaids staring out in black and white splendour is your mother. This was my introduction to what my mother looked like just four years before I was born, an encounter with family dynamics that made me re-evaluate my sense of “belonging” and concept of what “family” means.
My cousin came across the photo when she was clearing out her mother’s home and, knowing my mother had shrouded her early life in secrecy, took a snap and sent it to me. The photograph was of my aunt’s wedding day, a smiling couple in late 50s couture flanked by a beaming family. I barely recognised my grandparents, I’d known them when they were older and careworn, but which of the bridesmaids was my mother I simply couldn’t tell. One looked a little like me when I was young, so I presumed this must be her.
However, a few minutes later a second image arrived that put me right, the woman smiling boldly into the camera like a young Ava Gardner was “Mum”. Contrary to expectations built by programmes like Who Do You Think You Are, I didn’t find the mirrored features I’d expected or an overwhelming sense of connection. I wanted to understand my reaction, if it was a form of self-protection because I’d had spells with surrogate families over the years.
I was born in the 60s, a time now notorious for unmarried mothers, like mine, being persuaded to give up their children for adoption. Women were told this offered better opportunities for themselves and their babies and in 1961 some 12,981 of the 16,000 adoptions in England and Wales were children of unmarried women.
Courageously, my mother decided to raise me by herself, cutting her own bumpy path through life. Sadly, she also cut my father out of my early years. It was only as an adult that I traced him through the website Friends Reunited and realised he had been completely unaware of my situation. The choices Mum made, the safety nets we fell through, led to periods in state childcare, living with extended family, and families of school friends willing to offer stability and a full belly during summer holidays.
In a time before holiday clubs with free meals and celebrities like Marcus Rashford raising public awareness of childhood poverty, this was our only viable option. Rather than being a blighted time, I remember this higgledy-piggledy childhood as an adventure presenting opportunities to sample alternative lifestyles. From Looe to Croydon, New Cross to St. Leonards, I was a keen observer of the quirks and habits of my hosts, adapting to diverse ways of living; essential traits that feed my career as a writer.
One of the few photos Downs-Barton has of her mother, who is on the far right of the pictureWhen I write autobiographically or talk to my own children about my childhood it is the lack of mementoes of these surrogate families that snag my emotions. In children’s homes, personal possessions including clothes were an anathema. I have to rely on time-faded memories: a cupcake at the first children’s home, a disastrous placement with a religious spinster by the coast where I looked like a tonsured monk due to untreated ringworm, a funfair outing where I tried to convince friends it was a carer not me screaming on the rollercoaster, faces of institutional siblings – but few names.
There’s nothing to hold in my hand or show my daughters. In these more enlightened times, this lacuna, this emptiness, is a recognised phenomenon that institutions and foster families endeavour to fill. Memory boxes are literal and sometimes virtual stashes of precious toys, drawings, written memories of significant milestones and achievements that children entering care store for their futures. Organisations such as the FCA (Foster Care Associates) encourage all “looked after” children to create one, whether they’re in short-term respite care or longer placements. Each box is a collaborative creation, giving the child a voice, sense of belonging and access to memories wherever they move on to. The boxes stand in lieu of having a parent to remind you of funny incidents, saving fridge door masterpieces or people like my cousin rummaging around in her mother’s home and sharing photographs retrieved from a dusty shoebox.
Downs-Barton with her grandfatherMy memory box is more intangible, crammed with a legacy from the alternative family nests I’ve cuckooed. I learnt how to gather razor clams with a Romani family in Norfolk; how to deal with uppity ewes and renovate a Cornish hedge (drystone wall) living in a friend’s shack without electricity or running water; and I can rustle up a curried goat or full-cooked Welsh breakfast complete with laverbread.
The last of my periods away from home was a short stay in a local authority home catering for teenage girls. I was 15, used to “fitting in” but nothing prepared me for the life those girls there were living. Previously, I had been mostly fortunate in the care of my surrogate families, and I had a parent to return to, but this contrasted starkly with the girls in my last placement, as it did for many others from semi-rootless backgrounds. They are trapped in cycles that limit their horizons. A 2023 report by Civitas commissioned by the children’s charity First Star, found that just 14 per cent of care leavers went on to university compared to 47 per cent of the general population.
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Those with disrupted childhoods are also more likely to start their own families early, filling an emotional need to belong, and be part of a family unit. I can relate to this. I married at twenty, had my first daughter at twenty-three, gave myself the stability and sense of belonging I’d always lacked. My early experiences have shaped my relationships with my partner and daughters. They never question if they are wanted or loved, they know because I tell each of them: “You are my love at first sight”.
Our milestones are cherished in photographs, framed drawings or cheesy screensavers, and become the shared stories that make all families unique. Watching my children grow gave me moments of sadness for parts of my childhood that are lost, but also a determination to forge a new family dynamic for them, and myself too. It spurred my return to study, gaining a PhD – I’ll never tire of being called ‘Doctor’ – and to create a stable home my daughters can leave and return to as they move into adulthood. My youth had wobbly foundations and was unconventional and yes, I still feel the need to fill gaps in my “memory box” with mementoes of my mother and the surrogate families I passed through; but, my past was never boring, and its textures are a treasured facet in the sense of belonging I’ve created.
Karen Downs-Barton’s collection of poems, Minx, is published by Chatto & Windus
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