The Girls Who Went Away (23 page)

As the philosophical differences narrowed in the 1940s and social workers coalesced toward agreement on the best course of action for unwed mothers and their babies, efforts to identify the cause of out-of-wedlock pregnancy took a new turn. With the dramatic rise in premarital pregnancies after the war, and as greater numbers of middle-class women became pregnant, it became increasingly implausible to label all of those women as either feebleminded or sexual delinquents. Social workers noted that many of these new unmarried mothers were middle-class girls from good families. A Crittenton social worker wrote about these girls that the “sizeable numbers further confound us by rendering our former stereotypes less tenable. Immigration, low mentality, and hyper sexuality can no longer be comfortably applied when the phenomenon has invaded our own social class—when the unwed mother must be classified to include the nice girl next door, the physician’s or pastor’s daughter.”
²³

Social workers turned to the growing field of psychiatry for their answer and, as early as the 1940s, began to classify middle-class girls who became pregnant as neurotic: the unwed mother was a neurotic woman who had a subconscious desire to become pregnant. This theory dominated much of the diagnosis and treatment of unwed mothers in the decades that followed the war. Though social workers had been quick to condemn working girls as sex deviants, this new explanation was more appealing in explaining middle-class pregnancy because it downplayed the issue of sexual drive. By identifying the
young woman’s goal as pregnancy, rather than sex, the diagnosis of deviance could be bypassed.
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Though a young woman’s peers, family, and community may still have attributed her pregnancy to loose morals or an overactive sex life, professionals determined that the problem was in her mind.

One of the outcomes of this new professional diagnosis was the justification of the separation of mother and child: a neurotic woman was seen as unfit to be a mother. Given the stigma of illegitimacy in the 1950s and 1960s, many middle-class parents were quick to agree that the solution to the problem was relinquishment and adoption. Following this course, their daughter would be given a second chance. Her pregnancy would effectively be erased from her history and she could expect to go back to a normal life, as if it had never happened. Without her child she would be able to marry a decent man and have
other
children. She would not have to live with her mistake. Adoption also came to be understood as being in the best interest of the child. Rather than growing up with the stigma of illegitimacy and an unfit, neurotic mother, the child would be raised by a stable, well-adjusted, married couple.

And though some maternity-home workers were still empathetic to young women who did not want to surrender their baby for adoption, in the postwar years this breed of social worker was rapidly becoming extinct. Internal struggles at the maternity homes continued even into the 1950s, and are evident in correspondence between the leadership of the Florence Crittenton Association of America and the newly hired staff of individual homes. In a letter dated December 23, 1952, Robert Barrett, the chairman of the Florence Crittenton Mission, expresses his concern over a move to shorten the minimum length of a girl’s stay in the maternity home postpartum. The purpose of a mother and child’s returning to the home after birth was, Barrett asserts, to give the mother time to be with her baby before making a final decision to surrender. He writes:

Personally I feel very badly that a girl in our Homes shall not be given every opportunity and help to keep her baby if she wants to. Often a girl who has made up her mind to give up her baby feels different after the baby comes and her mother’s instinct is aroused. Not to give her that chance seems a
cruel and unnatural proceeding. I am not sure but I feel it would be better for the girl if she tries to take her baby and fails and has to give it up later
.
²⁵

The new policies were shaped by the experts—primarily psychiatrists, social workers, and medical professionals—and promoted by social organizations that had the power and means to disseminate the ideas. The women whose babies were being placed for adoption were not in any position to influence the policies made on their behalf. Shame is a very effective way to silence individuals, and those who are less socially or economically powerful are rarely in a position to influence the decisions that affect them.

The message was: this is the good thing to do for your baby. It would be really irresponsible to keep it. I was hooked up with a nice Jewish adoption agency in New York, so it was: “Your baby could have the best. How would you dare to cheat your baby of this good life?”

I know a little about the good life now because I have contact with my birth son. It’s stupid to tell young people that. Do they know that what the baby’s going to have is good? I mean, how can you say what? I’m a psychologist now. Could I interview somebody and tell you what kind of parent they’re going to be? But that was the spiel. I’d say I was brainwashed. It’s interesting when they talk about cults and people feeling dependent on leaders, and abusive relationships. I mean, I think this had some of those qualities.

It wasn’t like lecturing; it was a culture. It was a culture where you were desperate. You were ashamed and desperate. You needed these people and the culture was that you gave up your baby to a life that was better than you could give it. I feel like, what was wrong with me? I mean, I could have done it. I think I was numb or something. You know how when you’re sick sometimes you feel like all your energy is going toward healing your body and you don’t have energy for anything else? I think all my energy was going toward that baby and keeping my body okay.

I don’t know, I must have been crazier than I thought. I really believed that it would hurt my baby to be with me. They somehow
convinced me that all the bullshit of a fancy house and degrees—I have a doctorate myself and I think it’s bullshit. I don’t think it makes a good mother, I don’t think it makes a good father, I don’t think it makes a good person. It’s stupid. But somehow or other in that vulnerable position, being pregnant and being dependent, somehow it all came together and I just let that baby go.

It feels like a real violation to me. I was so beaten down that I believed—or maybe out of fear I made myself believe—that I was doing a good thing for this kid. I think the shame is I can’t correct it and I just really did the wrong thing. Really the wrong thing.

We have changed our idea of mothering. Now you’re supposed to have enough money to have two homes and four cars and send your kid to graduate school. Where in the world does this come from? I mean, I see people in therapy who want to be stay-at-home parents when they grow up because both of their highly educated parents have not been around.

I think the whole idea that there’s only one way for children to be raised—that we nice, white Americans know the way, and it’s married—is a joke, because 50 percent of those idiots who were saying that are divorced now.

—Judith I

In theory, it was not the social worker but the mother who made the ultimate decision whether to parent or relinquish. A Florence Crittenton brochure from 1952 reads, “The mother is under no compulsion, either to leave her baby with us, or to take him with her. There is no priority for either.” But it also states that “although the mother should perhaps make the choice, not always is she well qualified to make this last decision.” And though maternity homes were thought to be safe havens and “the goal of all these efforts combined is to induct into society a mother and child, each well started on the road to successful living,”
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in reality this goal was often not fully realized.

Rather than young women being given a realistic picture of the responsibilities and costs of raising a child and allowing them to weigh that information against the resources available to them so they could participate in
making an informed decision, they were rendered powerless. And though it might be easy to empathize with a social worker’s efforts to try to persuade a young woman of few resources to be realistic about raising a baby, especially if she lacked family support and did not understand the difficulty and sacrifice involved in raising a child as a single parent, the persuasive techniques were often quite forceful. The degree of pressure put on the women to surrender sometimes crossed the line from persuasion to outright coercion. Many of the women I interviewed recalled high-pressure campaigns waged by the maternity-home staff.

I remember the woman at the adoption agency, a very pleasant woman, smiling, always smiling, and using comforting tones. She had dark hair. She sat there and said that I had nothing to offer a baby. I had no education, I had no job, I had no money. Oh, God, they really knew how to work you. Talk about no support, it was how far can we beat you down while we’re smiling?

The social worker was telling me, “No man is going to want to marry you, no man is going to want another man’s baby.” She proceeded to tell me that the adoptive parents they would find for “the baby” would be college educated, degreed, they would be much older, they would own their own home, have high incomes. They would be able to give “the baby” everything that I could not.

They told me I was unfit because I wasn’t married. I didn’t have this, I didn’t have that. Well, it turns out her adoptive parents were just a couple of years older, and neither one had a college education. Nothing against them, but the adoption agency lied to me. They also divorced when she was fourteen. I’m with the same man for thirty-eight years. Financially, her adoptive family was better off than we were, but other than that it wasn’t anything like what the agency promised.

—Christine

The argument that others would be “better” parents presumed, of course, that the mother’s own economic standing would not improve anytime soon, if ever, through further education, job or career training, marriage, or family
support. It also presumed that the adopting couple’s status would not deteriorate through divorce or job loss. Essentially, the gap in economic and marital status between the mother and adoptive family was seen as fixed, whereas only a decade earlier the mother’s circumstances had been viewed as temporary and improvable, and steps were taken to help her become self-reliant.

In the postwar years, most of the homes aimed simply to ensure that the physical needs of the women were met until they could give birth and relinquish the baby. And despite the momentous life change that they were about to go through, most were sent to the hospital knowing nothing about childbirth; nor were they counseled about the impending separation. Most were completely unprepared for the emotions that would follow their transition from pregnant girls to mothers.

None of those girls in the home have given birth. So they’re all in their little rosy illusions about everything. They might talk about their parents or their school or their boyfriends or whatever, but they don’t know what’s coming. They have no clue what’s coming. So other than giving each other comfort—that we’re not the only ones in the world who are pregnant and not married, which was a good thing—there wasn’t any discussion about the things we should’ve been talking about. Just mostly happy little wasting-time kind of stuff.

—Ann

The most profound thing I remember is the nun at St. Andre’s telling me that it was God’s will. It was God’s will. We were fulfilling the needs and the hearts of women who couldn’t have children. And therefore God chose us to bear these children for these women who couldn’t have any. I was so susceptible to this thinking: I must accept God’s will. I could have more children, you see, so therefore what’s one child to be given away? I would see this child in heaven.

—Lynne

Of course, the pregnant women who went into hiding were not of one mind; nor were the staff of the institutions they entered. A few women reported
that they were counseled in a respectful manner and came to their own decision. But the majority of the women I interviewed did not make a
decision
to surrender. Many women, even those in their twenties, followed the only path that was available to them—the one prescribed by society, social workers, and parents. After all they had been through, and all they had put their parents through, they felt that, more than anything, they needed to regain their family’s acceptance. Some women decidedly did not want to surrender but were unable to devise a plan that would allow them to care for their baby without some temporary assistance. Many of the women who wanted to parent would have been capable of doing so with a modest amount of support, the kind offered to Bea only a decade or so earlier. But by the mid-1960s professionals were no longer offering this kind of support, and more than 80 percent of those who entered maternity homes surrendered.
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In my mind, all I knew was that if I was ever going to get home and be back in my family’s good graces I had to get this finished. I think we were too young to really realize that this child was going to be a little person until the day came and it
was
a little person. That always makes me cry. They were very unfeeling about it. I really felt we were being punished and they did a pretty good job of it.

—Mary I

Whether the women were resistant or compliant, the supposed transformation—the wiping away of the past in preparation for a stable marriage and legitimate childbearing—was often not successful. Rather than leaving the system with a clean slate, free of their past, many were burdened with feelings of low self-esteem and unworthiness, and laden with secrets, shame, loss, and grief.

I’ve battled depression ever since that time. I kind of overcome it. I’m successful. But I think of my life as before and after, sort of like
B.C.
and
A.D.
I think of who I was and who I am. Dealing with the emotion and the pain of it. Dealing with the loneliness I’ve always felt. Grief is exhausting. And I grieved. I think that sorrow
and sadness come about not just from the act of surrender but also from the lies.