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Have you ever thought about how hard childbirth would be for someone who barely constitutes as an adult themselves? Can you imagine going through that experience, only to be told you can’t keep your child and no matter what you do, they will never truly be yours? Can you imagine how much that would hurt?

In the story Coming home it describes exactly that, but in a more subtle way that’s fitting with the story and doesn’t divert too far from the main plot of the story. We’re introduced to the main character straight off the block, Mary Irwin, who's described in the story as a cold, tired and solitary individual, but also worried about everything.

The story, although rather short, manages to convey the extent of the damage from the event, and how it really affects someone in the long run. With this, I will be going over the effects of the event on not only the main character Mary Irwin, but her Son and the social stigma around the issue as a whole and how the story made me question the attitudes of society and why this kind of action was seen as okay.

Mary Irwin is lonely, isolated, miserable and doesn’t seem to care about much in the story. She feels the need to isolate herself and never get close to anyone ever again in the hopes something the likes of what happened to her; so painful and horrible, would never happen again. Overall, as unhealthy her way of coping seems to be, it does seem to work. However her harsh actions opened a Pandora’s box of issues that she wouldn’t know how to react too, and at the same time cut her off to a lot of opportunities that someone who has friends and people close to them would have. It was also this that brought on the fear of strangers she seems to have, and although for some people it’s fairly normal to have some form of fear when it comes to crowds and people the don’t know, Mary’s fear was far more severe and ran deep through her person, which left her in a never ending cycle of isolation and loneliness, with no clear way to escape from what she had put upon herself.

Then there’s her son, the unnamed Irwin boy, who went twenty long years without his mother, and several weeks of waiting for the exact moment to approach his mother. In the text, there isn’t too much said about him, and as it’s seen through Mary’s eyes, there wasn’t a lot to say other than his appearance and her deep set uneasiness towards him due to her blissfully unaware of his existence. He’s seen as a young man; at the ripe age of twenty years old and rather pleasant looking, and with features Mary recognises as uncomfortably similar to her own. She felt a faint connection but was unaware of for why this man who seemed to routinely watch her was so hard to pinpoint. Like his mother, he had many fears. The fear of confrontation and of being rejected seem to be the most prominent, however, and it’s painstakingly obvious with how long, how many weeks it took him to finally work up the courage to actually approach his mother, and attempt to reattach the severed tether that once linked them so closely. Without a doubt; he was definitely thinking of every possible thing that could go wrong with the situation. Would his mother not accept and love him, would she not care, would he somehow be wrong. It would cloud his mind up with the negativity, and make him doubt everything, even himself, and it all strained from a single problem that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Mary had lost her son the moment he was born, and without a doubt, knew it was going to happen. It still completely devastated her, and it left her an empty shell of who she used to be. She learnt something from the event, that she needed to isolate herself, and effectively cut ties with everyone she knew. She couldn’t have something like this happen to her again because she knew it would more than likely kill her with grief. She wasn’t the only one who was affected by the situation, though, everyone involved would be affected for years to come. Her son, although originally blissfully unaware of what would be inevitably happening to him, knew nothing of the event. But it would leave him with a plethora of problems in life. From not truly feeling like he belongs to his new family, to being teased for being adopted, to feeling as if the reason his mother abandoned him being that she simply didn’t want him, not because anyone had told him, but because he didn’t know the truth, nor did he think it could be anything different. That day, everyone had lost someone and no one except for Mary could see how wrong it was. The conservative society of the fifties and sixties seem to think there was nothing worse than a single and young mother having a baby out of wedlock. Yet they still had the audacity to try and protect the virtue that surrounded the bullshit and unrealistic ideals of a nuclear family. They didn't once stop to think how badly their forced ideas would affect people who had to experience it firsthand, and even today, refuse to admit they were wrong. Refuse to admit their mistakes that had ruined lives, tore apart families and caused so much suffering,

It’s with this information that I ask you, What would you truly do if someone alike to this happened to you and you were completely helpless to do anything to stop it. How would you be able to even live with yourself after letting it happen and being completely powerless to do anything about it, and with the knowledge that you would more than likely never see the child you had carried for countless months on end and had sworn to protect til the end of time, and although this doesn’t happen anymore. The conservative members of society, even people who lived in that time and were completely okay with it still think this was okay, and that there was nothing wrong with such an event happening, despite people still alive being deeply wounded and broken from this. I want you to think about this, and make sure something like this, a complete lack of humanity never happens again, and is never normalised.