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

  Then he started talking. He talked for an hour. He told me about her life, her husband, two boys, and a girl. But what he didn’t know was—there was another girl: two boys and two girls. He talked about growing up on the farm, the old Victorian house, and the banister they loved to slide down. Then he talked about her and how she was different from her sisters. He said, “She would much rather spend time in the barn than help in the house.” And he told other stories that sounded familiar.

  Finally, he asked how I knew her and I told him my mother had lived around there when she was young and had moved away. She wondered whatever happened to Eleanor. So he went into the house and brought out her address and phone number. And when I left, I drove to the town where she had lived all these years, just to drive by, to make sure she was okay. I had always worried that her family had disowned her and she had lived in miserable conditions. Maybe I thought I might catch a glimpse of her.

  It occurred to me afterward that she might get suspicious when her brother told her the story of a woman who had been asking about her. Maybe she had not told her children. She might be living in fear that I would show up on her doorstep next. I couldn’t decide whether I should contact her right away or wait. I waited fourteen years.

  During the years that followed, I created several autobiographical installations about adoption. Whenever possible I offered space in my exhibitions for members of the community to display their stories of adoption along with mine. I was overwhelmed by what I read. The writings left behind by women in New York, California, Texas, and Maryland were the same. What the mothers had been assured when they signed the papers giving up all rights to their children turned out to be a lie: they did not move on and forget. I think my adoptive mother knew this when she lit those candles. I think three years was all that she could bear. She needed to move on and forget.

  2

  Breaking the Silence

  You asked me why I agreed to be interviewed and I think it was because you were here, because you came here and it spoke to me—that’s all. There’s still that voice in me that says, “Who would be interested? No one cared then, why would they care now?” I was abandoned when it was right in everybody’s face, so I still believe that nobody cares. My personal struggle is to get beyond thinking I’m not worth caring about. I am here. I do exist. Maybe by adding my two cents I can help other moms who feel the way I do. Maybe they will find someone who cares.

  —Suzanne

  IN JUNE OF 2002, I began tape-recording the oral histories of women who surrendered a newborn for adoption between the end of World War II, in 1945, and the 1973 passage of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion throughout the nation. These years were a time of enormous change for young women as barriers to equality and independence broke down. For the young men and women growing up in the postwar years, especially those of the baby-boom generation, this liberation from the past also applied to sexual behavior. And though premarital sex was certainly not a new phenomenon, it became increasingly common among those who had no plans to marry. For women born after 1949, the odds were that they would have sex before they reached age twenty.1

  Despite the increase in the number of young people having sex in the 1950s and 1960s, access to birth control and sex education lagged far behind. Fearing that sex education would promote or encourage sexual relations, parents and schools thought it best to leave young people uninformed. During this time, effective birth control was difficult to obtain. In fact, in some states it was illegal to sell contraceptives to those who were unmarried. The efforts to restrict information and access to birth control did not prevent teens from having sex, however. The result was an explosion in premarital pregnancy and in the numbers of babies surrendered for adoption.

  Though sexual norms were changing among the young, the shame associated with single pregnancy remained. The social stigma of being an “unwed mother” was so great that many families—especially middle-class families—felt it was simply unthinkable to have a daughter keep an “illegitimate” child. These women either married quickly or were sent away before their pregnancy could be detected by others in the community. Between 1945 and 1973, one and a half million babies were relinquished for nonfamily or unrelated adoptions.2

  I’ve tried to explain to my kids that it wasn’t like it is today. Nobody knew that much about birth control. What used to bother me a lot was I knew lots of girls who were having sex; they just weren’t caught. If you were caught, somehow you were different, and you needed to be horrified and shamed. I was thinking, “But everybody’s doing it. Why am I a bad person now?”

  It was just totally, totally different. You didn’t keep your child. You didn’t. I knew one girl who got married and immediately divorced afterward. At least that would keep the people who talk at bay.

  —Laurinda

  Just about everyone who lived through this era has a memory of a girl from their high school, college, or neighborhood who disappeared. If she returned, she most likely did not come back with her baby but with a story of a sick aunt or an illness that had kept her out of school. If her peers doubted her story, they probably did not challenge her directly. They simply distanced themselves. According to the prevailing double standard, the young man who was equally responsible for the pregnancy was not condemned for his actions. It was her fault, not their fault, that she got pregnant.

  This was in that period of time when there wasn’t much worse that a girl could do. They almost treated you like you had committed murder or something.

  —Toni

  The girls who went away were told by family members, social-service agencies, and clergy that relinquishing their child for adoption was the only acceptable option. It would preserve their reputation and save both mother and child from a lifetime of shame. Often it was clear to everyone, except the expectant mother, that adoption was the answer. Many of these girls, even those in their twenties, had no other option than to go along with their families or risk being permanently ostracized. For them there was generally little or no discussion before their parents sent them away. Those who went to maternity homes to wait out their pregnancies often received little counseling and were totally unprepared for either childbirth or relinquishment. They were simply told they must surrender their child, keep their secret, move on, and forget. Though moving on and forgetting proved impossible, many women were shamed into keeping their secret.

  As soon as the time was near and we were going to do this interview, all these physical things started happening. My jaw doesn’t want to open and my lungs are all tight. I thought, “I wonder why I can’t open my mouth.” Then I realized, I’m supposed to be silent. I’m not supposed to tell this story. The secrecy has dominated everything. It’s so powerful and pervasive and the longer you keep a secret, the more power it takes on.

  —Diane IV

  I’ve never really felt like I could talk to anybody about it. You know, society has this picture—you hear about people giving their babies away. That whole terminology is just so misleading. I didn’t give him away. I think one of the reasons I don’t talk to some people about it is because they are so judgmental. Quite frankly, it’s not that society can’t understand, it’s that they won’t understand. People choose to not understand.

  —Carole II

  Afterward I never told, unless it was somebody I was very, very close to. I never opened up to anyone unless I felt that they would accept me. I felt like I lived a lie because people didn’t really know me. I was afraid that people would not accept me if they knew the truth. It was something that I carried with me for thirty-five, thirty-six years.

  —Carol I

  The secrecy has, in part, allowed some of the old myths about women who surrendered babies to survive. One assumption was that they were women who were having a lot of sex with a lot of different young men. In fact, a majority of the women I interviewed became pregnant with their first sexual partner, some from their first sexual experience.

  I’m being very hon
est with you by saying I was a very late bloomer. When I got pregnant, it was the very first time I had ever had sex. Very first time. I’m sure I probably didn’t even like it. I went all through high school and never had sex.

  My parents’ generation, that greatest generation, thought it didn’t happen to nice girls. You just have to know that’s what society and parents felt: nice girls didn’t get pregnant. But nice girls do get pregnant, and nice girls get pregnant now. People saw us as loose women. Well, I wasn’t a loose woman! It wasn’t that way for me. I didn’t sleep around. But that’s the label. That is absolutely the label. Oh, well. I could be called worse things. I could be called a liar. I could be called a cheat.

  —Cathy II

  Another prevailing myth is that these women were all eager to surrender their child and be free of their problem. The assumption that these babies were unwanted by their mothers is ubiquitous. The act of relinquishment seemed to confirm this, since it is commonly believed to be a personal decision made by the mother based on her lack of interest or desire to parent—a decision that is independent of social, family, and economic pressures. This misguided and simplistic notion has been hurtful not only to the mothers but also to many adoptees who believe that they were thrown away. Over the years, I have had many conversations with adult adoptees who say, “She didn’t want me. Why should I want to know her?” They clearly have no idea how infinitely more complicated their mother’s circumstances were and a short conversation could not possibly explain it. This book is partly a response to their comments. It is a story best told by the mothers themselves, and best understood within the context of the time period.

  Chances are the baby wasn’t unwanted. It was a baby unwanted by society, not by mom. You couldn’t be an unwed mother. Motherhood was synonymous with marriage. If you weren’t married, your child was a bastard and those terms were used. I think I’m like many other women who thought, “It may kill me to do this, but my baby is going to have what everybody keeps saying is best for him.” It’s not because the child wasn’t wanted. There would have been nothing more wonderful than to come home with my baby.

  —Glory

  Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to keep the baby, or explained the options. I went to the maternity home, I was going to have the baby, they were going to take it, and I was going to go home. I was not allowed to keep the baby. I would have been disowned. I don’t even know if they had programs to help women and children back then. I don’t know what was available. I was made to feel very ashamed of the situation that “I had created for myself” and for my mother and for my family and friends, so I felt all those avenues were closed. I guess maybe I had to convince myself that I didn’t give him away; I gave him a way to have two parents, a way to have a home. Maybe that’s a cop-out on my part. I don’t know, but that’s the only way I can live with it.

  —Joyce I

  I never felt like I gave my baby away. I always felt like my daughter was taken from me.

  —Pollie

  Yet another myth in common currency is that these women did move on and forget. In truth, none of the mothers I interviewed was able to forget. Rather, they describe the surrender of their child as the most significant and defining event of their lives. Given the enormous number of women involved and the impact the surrender had on their lives, not to mention the lives of their parents, their subsequent partners and children, the fathers of their babies, and the surrendered children, it is remarkable that so little is known about these mothers’ experiences even now, decades later. This silence has also kept many of these women from learning about one another and understanding that their feelings of loss were normal and consistent with thousands of other mothers who had surrendered children.

  I am shocked at how much it has impacted my life. I really tried to move on and forget, I tried to do what they said, but it didn’t work. I was convinced that there was something wrong with me. There must be something wrong with me. It was supposed to work; everybody said so. But it didn’t. No matter how many degrees I got, how many credits I had, how many years I worked, I was empty.

  —Glory

  The surrender was the beginning of a long cycle that colored my entire life. Your identity is formed in your teen years and if you take on this identity of a worthless, horrible, guilty person, then that’s going to affect you your whole life. Guilt was always such a pervasive part for me. Not that I was sexual, or not that I was pregnant, but that I let somebody take my child. That’s the guilt.

  People talk about the worst thing that could happen to you is to lose a child. And no one talks about that in terms of a birth mother. What do they think that is for her? Why would it be any different? It’s in your cells, and in your guts, and in your consciousness, and in your heart.

  —Diane IV

  As I listened to story after story, what impressed me so powerfully was the commonalities in the women’s experiences. How the surrender was not only a deeply personal experience that affected the life of each woman but also a profound collective experience. Taken together, these experiences offer evidence of the lack of individual choice and the pervasiveness of surrender as a social phenomenon. For most of the women I interviewed, it was not a question of choice but of doing what society demanded—a demand that society has never fully acknowledged.

  You know, it was such a long time ago and I started thinking, “Just let it go. Just let it go and move on,” yet I couldn’t, and I can’t. It’s a big issue to those who lived it. There are women out there who lost their firstborn child and never got to grieve. I can’t even put it into words. It’s a weird thing, this whole adoption thing where people think that someone could just hand their child over and it will be okay. Obviously it’s not. We’re still alive. We’re still here. We haven’t died. Our issues are every day. We live this every day. Every day.

  —Suzanne

  DOROTHY II

  I was fifteen that summer. And I was in love with the Rolling Stones. My girlfriend Patty and I spent a lot of time listening to their music. One day my brother came home with his best friend. He introduced me to this guy and I remember being singularly unimpressed. But I noticed he stared at me in a way that no other guy before had. And it frightened and fascinated me all at once.

  Meanwhile, I went on with my life as a Rolling Stones fan. And he started calling the house. He would call and ask for my brother. And we began to play this voice game where I would sound more and more seductive and he would sound more and more interested. And so that’s how we began. Then one day when he called, he actually asked me out. It was my first real date. I felt safe because he was my brother’s friend. I don’t even remember what we did that first time—probably drove around in his car. He had a baby-blue ’57 Chevy that was his pride and joy. He spent a lot of time talking about the car and all these little gadgets he had attached. And I kind of liked riding in that car. I felt really important. I’m fifteen years old and I’m thinking, “Wow, this is what dating is like.”

  Then one night he decided we should go parking. I thought it was just gonna be a make-out session. But the very first time, he was already pushing me back in the seat and I remember thinking, “Boys are a handful,” then thinking, “Well, he’s nineteen, maybe that has something to do with it.” And I think the very first time we went parking I began to be afraid. That this was going in a direction I was either not ready for or in some way I felt threatened by. And yet something else took over—a kind of fatalistic inability to say no. And I am not sure to this day why this happened. I’ve wrestled a lot with that.

  I began to be very secretive with my family, and not tell them I was meeting him. I can’t remember the first time we actually went all the way. I don’t remember how many dates, in other words, it took. But I do remember feeling betrayed, because he refused to wear a condom. I remember saying, “I don’t wanna do this, because I don’t want to get pregnant.” And he said, “Well, I promise you, you won’t get pregnant.” And I said, “How are you gonn
a manage this?” He said, “Well, I’m going to pull out,” and he explained what that meant. So he stopped trying to convince me and just took over and sort of pushed me back, and again I felt unable to act. I was stunned, dazed. I could not say no.

  It was very quick. I was not even sure that it had happened. It didn’t hurt terribly—it just felt a little uncomfortable. There was this wet feeling between my legs and I said, “Was that it?” He was unable to speak for a few minutes and then he said yes. Then he said, “You’re mine now.” And I think in my whole life that is one of the moments when I was the most afraid. In my whole life. Even now, to this day. That feeling of being owned was horrifying. And that’s when I began to think, “I don’t want to see this person ever again.”

  I began to make excuses not to see him. He was very possessive. I think we carried on for another month or so, and then I skipped a period. I was terrified. And I was just, I remember feeling like I was falling down this hole. I was just falling and falling and everything was spinning. And I thought, “No, not me. Why me?” My first love, and it wasn’t even a love. Why me?

  I didn’t know what to do. I was very ashamed. This was not something that good girls did. Because I came from a very kind of poor family, I was more acutely aware than most people, maybe, about reputations and how easily they are lost. I knew from the experience of living in that small town that girls who got pregnant really lost their ability to have any kind of decent life. It was over for you. Your best hope in those days was to marry the boy and have done with it, and in the years to come hope that people would just forget it. The thing was, I was fifteen. I didn’t love this boy. This was 1966—abortion wasn’t an option. I mean, we didn’t even think about it.

  He said, “I’ve told my mother” and his mother wanted to talk to me. Her answer was “You’re gonna get married.” She said, “We’ll help you get through this, but you have to marry him.” And I said, “I’m not really ready for marriage.” It’s one thing to deal with being pregnant, and quite another to deal with being someone’s wife. They said I was selfish. They called me some terrible things.