The Girls Who Went Away

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler, Penguin Books, 2007. 

Changes in American Society

During the early twentieth century, the unwed mother usually kept her baby after birth. Maternity homes helped girls find work as domestics so that they could support their child. After World War II there was a change in philosophy. The church charity volunteers were replaced by professional social workers, who made the girl surrender her baby to adoption agencies. Sometimes unwed mothers would stay in a wage home until space became available in a maternity home. The girl would receive room and board in exchange for providing child care to the family that took her in. Black girls were much more likely to be allowed to keep their baby. Also, poor girls kept their babies more often than middle-class girls. Poor families could not afford maternity homes or abortions, which often had to be obtained out-of-state.

Fathers

The fathers of the children received little moral condemnation; instead, the girls were blamed for not stopping the boy’s advances. Teenage girls who became pregnant out of wedlock were blamed for harming their parents’ reputations. All that was expected of the boy and his family was to pay some of the cost of the maternity home. Pregnant, unwed teenagers were often expelled from school (but the fathers of the babies were not).

Hiding Pregnancy

When a teenage girl missed her period, she tried to hide it from her parents as long as possible. It was hard to hide pregnancy in the showers in PE class at school. When parents found out that their daughter was pregnant out of wedlock, they worried about what the neighbors would think. 

Take Away, Not Abandonment

In the vast majority of cases researched by the author, the baby was taken away by the system, not abandoned by the mother. In those days, children, particularly girls, trusted and were obedient to authority. The young mother was pressured by the maternity home, the adoption agency, judges and parents to sign papers relinquishing her rights to her own baby. She was told that the child would suffer the stigma of being called a bastard and that no one will marry a single mother with a bastard child. 

Lack of Informed Consent

In the adoption process, there was a lack of Informed Consent. The mother was rarely represented by legal counsel and the mother was rarely given information about her legal rights. She was rarely told of her legal right to revoke consent during a period of time after the surrender, and she was rarely told about the possibility of receiving child support from the father. 

Mental Health of th Mothers

The birth mothers who had their babies taken away from them rarely received counseling or psychotherapy after the birth. Girls were told to forget their pregnancy, their stay in the maternity home, and even that they had a child. these mothers suffered from postpartum depression. For the remainder of their lives, guilt over not having stopped the take-away, that they are a feeling that they are living a lie, that they are pretending to be a good girl.