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

  She called our family doctor and the minute they took him away from me he started crying and he never stopped. They took him down to my mother’s room and he cried and he cried and he cried. I was in my room putting a pillow over my head, trying to get the sound away. I was so full of shame I couldn’t look anybody in the eye. I still struggle with that at age fifty-six. I begged my mom not to tell my grandmother and she said, “Leslie, we’ve got to, there’s a baby here.” The doctor said, “You know, I have to register this baby as a live birth.” I remember my mother being horrified because she knew somebody who worked in the vital-records center. He said, “I love you, honey, but I’m not going to lose my license over this.”

  My son cried that entire night and it was just more than I could bear. The doctor’s wife called the next morning to see how we were and my mother told her that it had been pretty rough so she said, “I’ll come take the baby until you can take it to the agency.”

  I delivered on a Saturday and I was back in school the next Monday, wrapped in foam rubber so nobody could see how quickly I lost the weight. My parents wrapped me in layers and every few weeks we would take a little more off. I remember my world turned gray—the light sources just shut off. I just felt like I was in a dim, dim world. I begged my mother to take me to a psychiatrist, which she did in a few weeks. We had to go to the next town because then you would never let your license plate be seen at the office of a psychiatrist. He saw me twice. On the second visit, he gave me some antidepressant medication. I started to take it and my mother saw it and flushed it down the toilet, because that was the era of, you know, “Bite a nail, honey.” So that was the sum total of my therapy.

  I finished that year of school. I had my little sports car and worked in the Villager store to get more Villager clothing, and I went off to the University of Georgia the following year, but my life was never the same. I joined a sorority and I distinctly remember one day we were all out on the sidewalk during rush, jumping up and down like a bunch of fools. I felt like a total nitwit. I’m thinking, “These girls don’t know what they’re in for in life.” I just felt like I was playing this humongous charade, a charade I continued.

  I never told anybody about it. I sealed it off. I laughingly called myself the born-again virgin because the country was now having a sexual revolution. It was Vietnam, hippiedom, and everybody was having sex like bunnies, real out in the open. Not this girl. I just kept putting on a lot of weight. I stayed very heavy. I had one or two boyfriends but if it would begin to get serious I’d either eat more or get rid of him. I didn’t have sex again until I was about twenty-three and believe you me, I had been on the birth-control pill for several months prior.

  As an adult, I got my buns into therapy. I worked hard at it but I never told anybody outside of therapy that I was a birth mother. I had a best friend who was a supervisor and a mentor and one night she told me that she had surrendered a child and I said, “Well, sit down…” and that was the first person that I’d ever told I’d had two children.

  The first time I said it in a room full of people was when I was in my late thirties, in group therapy. I always felt like people would be so totally repulsed by me that they would run from the room. After all, I didn’t just do it once, I did it twice. But I got nothing but compassion from the group and I was so stunned by their response that I couldn’t walk out of the room. My legs were like jelly. Two other therapists had to help me to the car.

  It’s been a very slow journey. Every time I tell, I get better and nobody’s left the room yet. That started me down the path of talking about it more openly. My husband and I had twins after we’d been married a couple of years. We went through in vitro. I thought I was going to die if I didn’t have a child that I could raise, yet I kept picking all these lousy relationships. I finally found my husband and I knew he was a good, solid guy. People always ask, “Did he know about this before you got married?” I’d say, “You’ve got to be kidding. That was part of the litmus test.”

  After I gave birth to the twins and settled down into a routine, depression started creeping in. Every stage they went through, I realized the stages that I had missed with my sons—when they talked, when they walked, when they cut teeth. It just became so real. I got more and more depressed and I was having a hard time getting close to my twins. I would have panic feelings that something was going to happen and I was going to lose them. If there was a kidnapping or any harm came to a child, I’d start crying and shaking and I had to turn off the TV. I mean, it was a little over the top. I was so frightened of losing them that I kept an emotional distance. So I got back into therapy and I worked on learning how to attach.

  Then I had a dream that I was driving down the street—the same type of curve where I thought about killing myself—and there were two little toddler boys sitting by the side of the road. I thought, “Oh, my God. They’re going to get hit.” So I stopped the car and I put them in the backseat and I said, “I’ve got to find their mother.” I relayed this dream in my group and a woman said, “So when are you going to look for the boys?”

  I started reading everything I could get my hands on and I called Concerned United Birthparents and talked to my district person. I remember saying, “But you don’t get it. You don’t get it. I had two kids.” She said, “Honey, we have workshops for women who gave up two and three. There’s a conference in a few months in California. You’ve got to come.” I said, “There are other people who gave up two children?”

  I went to my first CUB conference. I don’t know where we got the money but I got on this plane and I’m looking at everyone thinking, “Could she be a birth mother? Could she be a birth mother?” I forgot to ask what they did at these conferences. A van picked me up and another birth mother’s son was driving. The other guy in the front seat turns around and says, “What do you do at these retreats?” And I said, “You know, I haven’t a clue. I’ve never been to one. I didn’t even ask.” And the son of the birth mother piped up and said, “They cry a lot. They cry and they cry and they cry.” And on the way back I said, “Boy, were you right.”

  But instant friendships were formed and it was like I came out of a deep freeze. I felt like Rip Van Winkle. God, where had I been? I’d been through the women’s movement and I got militant about everything except this. I began to see it as an incredible women’s issue. My husband has always said he put one woman on the plane and an entirely different one came back.

  I became the chief social worker for one of the hospitals in town. Those were the days of hospitalizing teenagers who acted out for really long periods of time. In the beginning of the eighties, it started to go the other way—twenty-eight-day treatment for substance abuse—but before that people could be in the hospital for three to six months. I was the head of this unit and one of the things I kept noticing about the admissions was how many of the teenagers were adopted. I thought, “My God, could I have done more damage than I thought?” There was nothing in my college training about adoption. Adoption was what happened at the agency. It was an event. It wasn’t a physiological anything. I hadn’t learned anything about it. I think it’s in the best interest of the public to learn a whole lot more about the consequences of adoption. There are repercussions for this little societal experiment—for all of us. You don’t just pick a baby up from one place and graft him onto another. It doesn’t work that way. This false view that society has of adoption is still costing an awful lot of people a lifetime of pain and regret.

  They thought they were protecting people. They were protecting adoptees with all the secretiveness. They were protecting adoptive parents from any disruption, and they thought they were protecting a girl’s reputation. That was all a part of the secrecy. But it made it all the more shameful and it ended up hurting people. We were all kept apart by the system and it was very unhealthy.

  Sometimes when I meet birth mothers who fought tooth and nail for their babies I feel so ashamed of myself, that I didn’t have the fight. How do
es a woman separate from her own flesh? Only by dissociating—I don’t think there’s any other way you can do it. I met one woman who wouldn’t sign the papers and she was put in a mental institution by her parents and kept there for a year until she signed. I thought, “Oh, why couldn’t I have been that one?”

  8

  The Aftermath

  I guess once I got married I felt more normal but still, it’s kind of like being in a black hole somewhere. It’s as if part of you went away when that happened. A really big part of you went away and you pretend that it didn’t. You don’t know who you are anymore. It’s like suddenly you got cut in half. So what you really end up being is half a person who pretends she’s whole. Even though I got married twice, I had two kids, and I have a very successful business, nothing takes away that black hole. Because you’re always lying, you’re always pretending. You’re not true to who you really are.

  —Ann

  SURRENDERING A CHILD for adoption has been described by many of the women I interviewed as the event that defined their identity and therefore influenced every major decision they made thereafter. Since most of these women surrendered when they were between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three, the event shaped their entire adult lives. It affected the timing of, or ability to pursue, their educational goals, their choice of a career, their decision about having subsequent children, their parenting style, and their relationships with parents, friends, and partners.

  Women who said they never entertained the idea of parenting at the time of their surrender often described the same lifelong grief as those who fought to bring their baby home. Their grief has been exacerbated, and in some cases become chronic, because they were not permitted to talk about or properly grieve their loss. Not only was the surrender of their child not recognized as a loss; the implication was they should be grateful that others had taken care of their problem.

  It was never to be mentioned, it was never to be grieved, it was just to be denied. Then little by little, I started picking up with life, but I think I was filled with rage. I have to say, it was the most altering event of my whole life—a defining moment, a defining time. I believe that the way that I led my life, let’s say the first ten years after, was reckless, was without regard for myself, my health, well-being, anything, because I had no value. And it was probably without regard for other people as well, because it was difficult for me to respect other people, it was difficult for me to trust.

  I’m sure people looked at my life and thought I had everything all together. I have a lot of aunts and uncles and I can remember being called nice little Kathi and thinking, “If you only knew.” I felt like I was a demon. It wasn’t until I went into therapy that I ever reached the point of feeling I deserved to be valued; it was all about deserving. People do not have a clue what people’s lives are like from appearances. Appearances are just the greatest illusion. I think if somebody feels they’re all alone, that’s one of the worst feelings.

  —Kathi

  Studies that have examined the grief of relinquishing mothers have identified a sense of loss that is unique and often prolonged. In one such study, the grief was likened to the separation loss1 experienced by a parent whose child is missing, or by a person who is told their loved one is missing in action. Unlike the grief over the death of a child, which is permanent and for which there is an established grieving process, the loss of a child through adoption has no clear end and no social affirmation that grief is even an appropriate response.2

  Afterward I was very introverted. I could not have a close friend because I felt like such a fraud. How could I consider myself a close friend without them knowing about this? And, of course, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. I was a good girl and was going to do what I was told. It just makes you feel like a lesser person, because you’ve done this horrible thing, this unspeakable thing. I just kind of withdrew. It’s like the person that you are was put on hold and you’re somebody else, you’re flawed.

  —Connie III

  Anger, guilt, and depression are normal grief responses to a major loss. And though grief may never go away, it generally subsides with time. For relinquishing mothers, however, the grief may actually intensify over time.3 One study has shown that high levels of unresolved grief in women were found to correlate with the “lack of opportunity to express feelings about the loss, the lack of finality of the loss (the child continues to exist), the perception of coercion, and the resulting guilt and shame over the surrender.”4

  Before I went into that place I was always very happy, liked everybody, would talk to everybody, was a class officer in high school, a cheerleader. I was that kind of a person. I came out of there a different person. It changed me. It really changed my personality. I got very sad. I was very withdrawn.

  I went back to school after that happened and everybody would say to me, “What’s your problem? What’s the matter with you? Did someone die in your family?” Well, having a child, giving it up for adoption is like having a death in the family. The only difference is you can’t publicly be sad; you gotta be sad by yourself. I think it hardened me. I was really nasty to people. I was mad at the world. I was mad at my parents, I was mad at everybody, even if they had nothing to do with it.

  —Cathy II

  The National Mental Health Association has issued a list of the best ways to cope with a major loss, like the death of a loved one.5 The list suggests that the grieving person should “seek out people who understand your feelings of loss; tell others how you feel; take care of your physical health and be aware of the danger of developing a dependence on medication or alcohol; make an effort to live in the present and not dwell on the past; try to take time to adjust to your loss by waiting to make major changes such as moving, remarrying, changing jobs or having another child; seek outside help when grief seems like it is too much to bear; and be patient because it can take months or years to absorb a major loss.” Without proper guidance or counseling, most of the women I interviewed took action that was precisely the opposite of these recommendations, some of it on the advice of professionals.

  I got married. I thought, “I better get myself off the streets. This is not going well.” I was just living this lie, this lie, this lie. “Do you have children?” “No.” It’s like being Judas every time. You’re denouncing who you are, who they are. You just feel terrible. I married this man under false pretenses. Did he ever know I had children? Absolutely not. I didn’t tell him.

  I had a wedding, the wedding that my sister wanted. Everything was a lie. I didn’t want a wedding, but he was Italian and Catholic, and you had to have a wedding. Oh, God. Then he says, “We can have children.” I looked at him, like, “Are you insane?” The last thing I ever wanted to be was pregnant. I said, “I’m too young to get pregnant.” That’s what I told him. I was twenty, twenty-one at the time. He was an airline pilot, I was a stewardess. I said, “Well, maybe in five years, I don’t know.” But the whole idea was so repellent to me. It was all mixed up with this grief and this guilt. No, I just couldn’t.

  So I’m married and everything is so perfect. We go on a Hawaiian honeymoon—everything is just so, so, nice. We lived on forty acres of land, we built this beautiful house, we had so much money. Every weekend we were going over to my parents’ house and having steak dinners and barbecues. I remember one of these Sundays as we pulled into my parents’ suburban neighborhood I just started hitting my head against the seat of the car. I was just going a little crazy. It was all the things I couldn’t say. It was July. The birth month. So July was always horrible, horrible, horrible. Even if my mind didn’t remember, my body remembered. This really lives in your body.

  —Diane IV

  The symptoms described by the women I interviewed are precisely the same as those of the surrendering mothers chronicled in professional studies of their grief. Many women had experienced several—and some nearly all—of the following symptoms: depression; damaged self-esteem; persistent guilt, shame, and self-loat
hing over “giving away” their child; an enduring sense of emptiness and loss that is not erased by having other children; persistent loneliness or sadness; difficulty with intimacy, attachment, or emotional closeness; lack of trust; anger; severe headaches or physical illnesses that cannot be explained or diagnosed; and occasionally posttraumatic stress disorder, characterized by extreme anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks, and nightmares.6

  After I surrendered my child, I had a conviction that I was a horrible person. I was a horrible, horrible person and I acted like one for many years, too. I know people from that time told me that they were actually afraid of me because I was so bitchy and sarcastic and kind of radiating hostility and anger. I have a very cutting tongue. Over the years, it’s been much modified. I’m a much kinder, gentler person than I was then. I wasn’t worth much for a long time. My husband was a huge dose of reality. He was a good friend. He knew everything about me. I mean, he knew everything and he still liked me. I lost a lot of my bitchiness with him.

  I thought I made the intelligent decision. I made a rational decision that I’m still convinced was the best thing for her. I can’t imagine what our lives would have been like. In some ways, it was probably pretty frigging self-serving. I wasn’t strong enough to face the idea of raising a child on my own. I came from middle-class, normal, suburban Americana. It was not acceptable under any circumstances to be a single mother, and I wasn’t tough enough to face all that. But the pain never goes away. It just never does.