J. P. Delaney

In the Bible, King Solomon was famously faced with a nigh on impossible case. Two women both claimed to be the mother of a baby boy. They’d given birth at roughly the same time, but one child had died. Each was now accusing the other of stealing the live infant. Calling for a sword, Solomon craftily declared there was only one solution: divide the child and give half to each woman. Immediately, one of the women fell to her knees, saying she renounced her claim. She would rather the child was brought up by someone else than see it die as the result of Solomon’s brutal justice. Solomon then ordered that the baby be given to her, as she had proved herself the true mother. Whatever this tells us about standards of transparency and openness in the family courts circa 900 bc – what would Solomon have done if neither woman had cried out, or both did? Carried out his original judgement, presumably – it speaks to an ancient truth: our children mean more to us than we do to ourselves. But what if you are suddenly told that the child you are bringing up – the child you have fed, bathed, played with, taught the letters of the alphabet to, parented for two whole years – isn’t yours? What if you discovered that your child had been mistakenly switched with someone else’s at birth? That is exactly what happened to my partner and me . . .