The Girls Who Went Away (50 page)

Every day my pregnant cousin greeted the mailman hoping he would bring a letter from the baby’s father saying he would marry her. The baby was given up for adoption and the mother returned to northern Wisconsin to take a teaching position. Her parents never knew what happened.

I moved back to Wisconsin 5 years later but during the subsequent 40 years my cousin never mentioned her situation and I never brought it up. I always figured that all was well and she had forgotten about it. Alas, that was not the case. She gave me your book, and finally we’re talking about it again.

An interesting aside is that during these years, she has been understanding and supportive of my sexual orientation and has helped me to accept myself as the person I really am. I’ve learned that good can come from many sources—even from devastating circumstances.

Sincerely yours,

Ronald

Dear Ms. Fessler:

I am 52, and my birth mother was a 22-year-old college student when she got pregnant with me. No one knew she was pregnant. She got hooked up with a doctor who told her of a couple who needed someone to help them with their baby. My birth mother lived with my (adoptive) parents from the time she was about 4 or 5 months pregnant until about a week after she gave birth. She did not know that my parents were going to adopt the baby she was carrying.

I contacted her in 1991 and she wasn’t very happy to hear from me. She was very ashamed of getting pregnant, even at 60 years of age. She felt she couldn’t tell her brother and sister—she feared they would judge her harshly—but she sent me pictures of my three half-sisters and told me about her pregnancy and my relinquishment.

In 1998 I wrote her a letter to see if she had changed her mind about telling her daughters about my existence. Eleven days later my youngest sister called me. My mother had died of lung cancer in 1996.

My new relatives tell me I have many of my mother’s mannerisms and I now understand where I got my temperament. Finally, I can look at
someone who looks like me. My sisters tell me I’m the greatest gift our mother could have ever given them. I feel truly blessed.

Yours very truly,

Sharon

Dear Ann,

I adopted a baby boy in 1969. I too was given only a little information from the private agency that placed him with us. I did ask if his mother received counseling before and after his birth. I was told she had, but later learned she had not. I was thrilled with my son and to finally be a mother after numerous failed pregnancies. He was an answer to many prayers and deals I had made with God.

As his first birthday approached I found that I was very sad and thought of his “other mother” all the time. On the actual day, I cried and cried and I had only a hint of what she must have felt that day. The same thing happened the next year and I thought of her on every birthday after.

My son Erik knew from very little that he was adopted. I cut the nonsense about being selected. He was told that I could not have a baby and that his other mother was very young and could not care for him. During the years he asked few questions but I told him that if he ever wanted to meet his “other mother” I would help him.

He found her around his 35th birthday. He was married, the father of two girls, and knew how important a medical history was for himself, and now for his daughters. (He had lost two friends to cancer and one to a brain embolism.) He contacted the agency and wrote her a letter. She responded immediately. In March of 2005 he met K. and her three children. I met her two weeks after he did. K. has since stayed with me and when I travel to California we always get together. So much of what she told me is echoed in your book. Her biggest fear was that he had never been adopted.

My heart goes out to K. in so many different ways. I know how lucky I am to have raised a beautiful baby boy into a thoughtful, funny, really nice guy and darn handsome man that I can call my son. She has said several times that she could never have given him the life he had with me and I know that is true. But at what a price!

For the woman that becomes a mother through adoption it is easy to
forget the price someone else paid. I want K. and Erik to have a mother/son relationship for as long as they possibly can.

Marie

readers may write to the author at:
http://thegirlswhowentaway.com

W
HEN I TALKED
about the stories I was recording for this oral-history project, the first question people asked was “How do you find these women?” But more often than not, after I responded they told me about a mother or sister or aunt or friend of theirs who went away. Simply talking to others about what I was doing led me to many of the women I interviewed.

I have also met women through the exhibitions, films, lectures, and the visual and audio installations I have produced on the subject of adoption. Descriptions of the oral-history project were sent to regional coordinators of American Adoption Congress and Concerned United Birthparents with the request that these organizations forward the information to potential respondents, who were then asked to contact me directly through e-mail if they were willing to be interviewed.

Public-radio interviews and newspaper articles about the oral histories generated the largest number of responses and volunteers. Feature articles in the
Boston Globe
and the
Providence Journal
precipitated hundreds of e-mails from mothers who had surrendered, as well as from their subsequent children
and friends, adoptees and their half siblings, and adoptive parents. Newspaper articles led me directly or indirectly to women who had told very few people about their experience and had not been part of support groups. I still receive e-mails in response to articles published years ago that someone has just located through an Internet search or received in the mail from a friend.

My goal was to interview as many women as I could reach, but no fewer than one hundred, before publication of this book, while attempting to be mindful of age, geographic, and ethnic diversity. I did not ask the women about their relinquishment experience or their sentiments about adoption in advance of the interviews, nor did I prescreen potential interviewees based on their story. I indicated that I was interested in diverse stories and welcomed all perspectives. I asked potential interviewees to send only their name and current city and state of residence, in addition to the year and place of the surrender. I also asked that the women be willing to give me permission to record their stories and to later publish excerpts in written or audio form. This naturally eliminated women who did not want to reveal their story or were fearful that I would not respect their anonymity. I was contacted by more women than I could possibly interview, and I regret that I still have a long list of willing participants whom I was unable to reach in time for this book.

C
HAPTER
2: B
REAKING THE
S
ILENCE

1.
Sandra L. Hofferth, Joan R. Kahn, and Wendy Baldwin, “Premarital Sexual Activity Among U.S. Teenage Women Over the Past Three Decades,”
Family Planning Perspectives
19, no. 2, Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York and Washington, D.C. (March–April 1987), 46–53, table 3.

2.
Kathy S. Stolley, “Statistics on Adoption in the United States,”
The Future of Children
3, no. 1, The Center for the Future of Children, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation (Spring 1993), 30, figure 2, citing P. Maza, “Adoption Trends: 1944–1975,”
Child Welfare Research Notes
no. 9, Administration for Children, Youth, and Families, Washington, D.C. (1984).

C
HAPTER
3: G
OOD
G
IRLS V.
B
AD
G
IRLS

1.
Sandra L. Hofferth, Joan R. Kahn, and Wendy Baldwin, “Premarital Sexual Activity Among U.S. Teenage Women Over the Past Three Decades,”
Family Planning Perspectives
19, no. 2, Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York and Washington, D.C.
(March–April 1987), 46–53, table 3. See also Lewis M. Terman,
Psychological Factors in Marital Happiness
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1938); Alfred Kinsey,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
(Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1953); Alfred Kinsey,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
(Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1948).

2.
Martin O’Connell and Carolyn C. Rogers, “Out-of-Wedlock Births, Premarital Pregnancies and Their Effect on Family Formation and Dissolution,”
Family Planning Perspectives
16, no. 4, Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York and Washington, D.C. (July–August 1984), 157–62, figure 1.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Ellen K. Rothman,
Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 289. Paula Fass,
The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). For 1930s studies by Lewis Terman, see
Psychological Factors in Marital Happiness
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1938). See also John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman,
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
(New York: Harper & Row, 1988).

5.
Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd,
Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1957), 135–41.

6.
Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era,
rev. and exp. (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 68.

7.
Beth Bailey,
Sex in the Heartland
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 45–46.

8.
Rothman,
Hands and Hearts,
301. For a sociologist’s perspective on “going steady” in the 1950s, see Winston Ehrmann, “Dating Characteristics,” in
Premarital Dating Behavior
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1959).

9.
Hofferth, Kahn, and Baldwin, “Premarital Sexual Activity Among U.S. Teenage Women Over the Past Three Decades,” 46–53.

10.
Roger J. R. Levesque,
Adolescents, Sex, and the Law: Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Citizenship
(Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2000), 69, citing Edward O. Laumann, et al.,
The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

11.
Linda Gordon,
Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America
(New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976), 26–46.

12.
Ibid., 64–66.

13.
Ibid., 26–46.

14.
See Gordon,
Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right,
for a thorough history of birth control in America.

15.
Beth Bailey,
Sex in the Heartland
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 106.

16.
John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman,
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
(New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 246, citing Kinsey,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,
regarding use of the diaphragm.

17.
Griswold v. Connecticut,
381 U.S. 479 (1965). Argued: March 29, 1965. Decided: June 7, 1965.

18.
Eisenstadt v. Baird,
405 U.S. 438 (1972). Argued: November 17, 1971. Decided: March 22, 1972.

19.
June Machover Reinisch with Ruth Beasley,
The Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex: What You Must Know to Be Sexually Literate
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).

20.
Phillips Cutright, “Illegitimacy: Myths, Causes and Cures: A Family Planning Perspectives Special Feature,”
Family Planning Perspectives
3, no. 1, Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York and Washington, D.C. (January 1971), 25–48, table 3.

21.
Alan Guttmacher Institute, “Facts in Brief: Teen Sex and Pregnancy” (
www.agi-usa.org
), 1999, updated February 19, 2004.

C
HAPTER
4: D
ISCOVERY AND
S
HAME

1.
Martin O’Connell and Carolyn C. Rogers, “Out-of-Wedlock Births, Premarital Pregnancies and Their Effect on Family Formation and Dissolution,”
Family Planning Perspectives
16, no. 4, Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York and Washington, D.C. (July–August 1984), 157–62, table 2.

2.
Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era,
rev. and exp. (New York: Basic Books, 1999), xii, table 1.

3.
The 1972 Title IX Educational Amendment Act forbids the expulsion of pregnant girls from federally funded schools. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender. See also Roger J. R. Levesque,
Adolescents, Sex, and the Law: Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Citizenship
(Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2000), 216.

C
HAPTER
5: T
HE
F
AMILY’S
F
EARS

1.
Kathy S. Stolley, “Statistics on Adoption in the United States,”
The Future of Children
3, no. 1, The Center for the Future of Children, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation (Spring 1993), 32.

2.
Ibid.

3.
Stephanie Coontz,
The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
(New York: Basic Books, 2000), 24–25. See also William H. Chafe,
The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II,
2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 112.

4.
Chafe,
Unfinished Journey,
112–13.

5.
Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era,
rev. and exp. (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 67.