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

  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,”26 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.27

  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.

  —Lynne

  The practice of telling young women that they would be able to give birth, surrender their child, and move on as if it never happened caused many irreparable harm. Rather than being prepared during their residency either for mothering or for the feelings that would follow relinquishment, the women were made to feel like something was wrong with them for loving and mourning the loss of their child. Not only did this practice not acknowledge their motherhood, it did not respect their dignity.

  Throughout my pregnancy I always thought that I could put this behind me. I thought, “I am growing a baby for a family that could not have children. They will be the best parents in the world. They will love him and take care of him.” And I always thought my purpose of getting pregnant was to give a child to a family that could not have one. I thought, “I’m going to put it behind me, like it didn’t happen.” Like I had a lobotomy and I could cut off the memory. That didn’t happen.

  I had moments when I wanted to cancel this interview because I’m reliving this. Why do I want to bring this up fresh in my mind? I thought, “Okay, I’m going to do my two, three hours and then I’m going to push it back again and go ahead.” But I’m lying to myself now, just like I lied to myself then. I didn’t deal with my pregnancy. I never dealt with the fact that I was growing a baby that I would have to relinquish.

  —Sheryl

  KAREN I

  It was 1965 and I was just beginning my senior year of high school. This was the beginning of our second year together. I found out that his family was moving. His dad was in the Navy, and they were moving to Norfolk, Virginia. I was devastated. We were very close.

  His family did move. We had kept in touch by phone, but two months later he called and said, “We got tickets to a Lovin’ Spoonful concert.” He was missing me as much as I was missing him. So his brother’s girlfriend and I got on the Greyhound bus, all dressed up in our suits and miniheels, and traveled four hours to Norfolk. They picked us up at the bus station and we went to the Lovin’ Spoonful concert, which was my first-ever music concert, and it was great. “Do You Believe in Magic” and “Summer in the City”—it was great.

  So two kids caring very deeply about each other—it was just the right environment for something like sex and pregnancy to occur, and it did. Everything seemed fine until a month later, when I missed my period. I never had before. I thought it was just the stress of being without my boyfriend and trying to adjust to being a senior. But then I started gaining weight and I missed my second period. I still tried to deny it. I couldn’t fit into my clothes. I was wearing Villager dresses at the time, and those penny loafers that were called Weejuns. You know, back then you couldn’t wear anything but dresses or skirts to school and they had to be at the middle of your knee or you got sent home.

  So I would wear my dresses unzipped in the back, with the same cardigan sweater over my dress, to school every day. And I could remember being so terrified. I mean just stark terror, knowing that I can’t keep doing this—trying to fit into my clothes, using safety pins whenever I could. And I was seeing the change in the mirror of just getting bigger and bigger. And thinking, “Oh my God, I have to address this.” I was terrified to tell my mom.

  My dad and I were very close; he’s always been my best friend. I had never called him at work; he worked at the Pentagon. I went to the pay phone and I called my dad and I said, “I’m in trouble,” which of course, you know what those three words mean. That phrase is all you have to say. And he said, “That’s okay, we will figure it out. I’ll be home and we will talk.”

  So I came home and he came into my bedroom and he sat down on the side of my bed and said, “How far are you?” and I said, “Probably four or five months.” And he said, “I wish you had told me sooner. We could have given you a pill.” I don’t know what kind of pill, but I remember thinking, “Oh, I’m so glad I don’t get a pill.” And then he said, “That’s okay, I’ll talk to your mom and I’ll let you know what we decide. I love you. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

  I got up the next morning and I’m listening to the AM station on my transistor radio and I’ll never forget—“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” by B. J. Thomas, was playing. I mean, to this day that song stops me in my tracks. I’m lying in bed and I’m hearing my mother sobbing outside my door, and I’m thinking, “Oh God, the shit has hit the fan. Now I have to face my mom.”

  The only thing I remember after that is going to Sears and her buying me two maternity dresses and then she took me to a doctor who gave me my first internal exam, which was absolutely mortifying. And the next thing that I remember is that my mom is telling me to pack my suitcase, that I’m going to live with people in D.C. I had no idea this was coming. Apparently, this was a wage home. The maternity home didn’t have enough room in it for the numbers of girls who were pregnant. So they had to farm out girls somewhere else to hide their pregnancy until they were seven months. Then we could be admitted.

  So she drove me down to D.C. and pulled up in front of this brownstone. And she walked me in and I remember it being very dark. I don’t remember meeting the people who lived there. My mother walked me up the steep stairs to the attic. My head brushed the ceiling of the room that was to be my bedroom. All there was up there was a single bed with just a mattress and the frame, a small four-drawer plain dresser, and an old bathroom with a claw-foot tub and a shower curtain that went around it in an oval. It scared me, because I wasn’t used to anything like that.

  I was to live there and answer to these people every day as to what they wanted me to do for them. I very much remember being asked to serve cocktails to their friends when they had their parties, and feeling like I was the conversation piece. I was their little unwed mother, serving them cocktails. I was seventeen years old. I was so depressed. I mean, I remember crying every night—it seemed like all night—listening to my radio. That was the only friend I had—my radio and all those songs that were out then. You know, like “Monday Monday,” by the Mamas and the Papas. There is this one part in “Monday Monday”—“How could you leave and not take me?”—that just gives me chills to hear that verse because that’s exactly how I felt. They just took me and dumped me off. I didn’t know where I was, how long I’d be there, who these people were, or what they were going to make me do. I felt totally abandoned and rejected and defective and just lived in terror every day.

  I told my mom in a phone call, “I’m going to leave and run away and you’re never going to see me again if you don’t come and get me out of here.” They almost immediately took me out of there and put me in Virginia w
ith a family that was much younger. I think the man worked on Capitol Hill as a representative. But they were very good to me in comparison, that was like going from hell to heaven overnight. They had two small children and I was to be the nanny to their children. I remember her sewing very simple shift dresses for me to wear.

  Both of these families took me to the maternity home on a daily basis so that I could finish my senior year of school. They had a classroom at the maternity home. Then I was admitted when I began my seventh month. My mom came and got me from the house in Virginia and drove me to the maternity facility. It had three floors. I was on the second floor. The elevator door opened into the living-room area, which they called the congregation room, and it had green vinyl furniture with metal, cold metal arms.

  I remember in the mornings going down to the bathroom in my slippers and it would just echo. Carrying my toothbrush in my hand. Early in the morning or late at night, you could hear girls crying in their rooms. We were only allowed to use our first name and last initial. We were not allowed to ask any questions of each other, like where did you go to school, are you from this area, tell us about your experience. We were strictly told, “Mind your own business. Don’t ask questions. Don’t get to know the other girls. You’re here for a reason. Keep to yourself.” So we did.

  When we did hang out together, we would go down to the main office and sign out and put on our fake wedding rings and walk down the hill. We would either go to a movie or we would walk down another block to a little grocery store. I remember only seeing one movie while I was there and that was Born Free, which I find very ironic.