by Ann Fessler
Though I cannot express it precisely, that ring seems emblematic to me of everything that has happened—of my endless circling and of returning to the place where it all began. It was a ring once given to my mother by my father as a symbol of his commitment. And in the years since, it has no doubt served as a reminder to her of that relationship and of me—the child born of it—a pregnancy for which society made my mother, and many women like her, pay dearly. Perhaps what I have been trying to do is to rectify that wrong. But I think my drive to record the stories of the girls who went away, and my belief that what they have to say is important, is linked to the endless circle—of love and family and mistakes and second chances—symbolized by that ring.
Afterword
IN THE MONTHS SINCE The Girls Who Went Away was published I have received hundreds of e-mails from readers whose lives were affected by events like those chronicled in the book. About half of the letters were from surrendering mothers who—though not interviewed—felt that their stories had nonetheless been told. Adoptees were the second largest group to respond. Most said reading the stories helped them to better understand their mother and the social pressures of the time, others wrote to attest to experiencing a similar fear of intimacy and sense of loss.
Women who came of age in the 1950s and ’60s wrote to reflect on how they might easily have been one of “the girls,” had it not been for dumb luck. Many recalled women they had known who went away, and several vowed to locate a former classmate to apologize for their lack of compassion at the time. I also heard from a few women who surrendered babies more recently. One felt she was stigmatized for placing her baby for adoption at a time when it is so common for a single woman to raise children. Another reported that despite having more involvement in the adoption process, the feelings of loss and guilt were similar. She felt that within her conservative community the sense of shame was no different than in the ’50s and ’60s and despite the fact that she was in her twenties and a college graduate, she was “pushed strongly” toward adoption. She did not respond when I asked for permission to reprint her e-mail. Perhaps it is this shame that lead to her silence, as it did for generations of women before her.
I was deeply moved by the letters sent from brothers, sisters, subsequent children, cousins, and friends of surrendering mothers, as well as the notes sent from adoptees’ spouses and adoptive parents. As I read these letters, I was saddened by the longing of those who are still trying to connect, but heartened by the compassion expressed by so many caring people.
Dear Ann,
My name is Richard and I’m 63, a retired elementary school teacher, now living in Florida. Recently, in talking to my 61-year-old sister in Indiana, she mentioned a review of your book. I bought her a copy and we began reading it at the same time. I hoped, amongst all of the stories, she would find her own. I told her if that happened—upon finishing—she should write an inscription and send the book to the daughter she put up for adoption back in ’65. I felt, by book’s end, that her daughter must read this book in order to have a much better understanding of the time period and why so many very young women found themselves in what was essentially a hopeless, no-win, heartbreaking situation. I’ve also ordered copies for my two other sisters and had them sent with a note saying it was time to celebrate our sister’s “bravery.”
My sister married in the 1970s and, to my knowledge, she never told her husband she had had a child before meeting him. He has since passed away. They never had any children of their own. Some years back she received a call from Catholic Charities and was told her daughter would like to contact her. In the years since, they’ve continued to talk and she has met her daughter’s husband and her three girls (her grandchildren).
My sister—and all of these girls over so many years—were abused by a system that did not have too much concern for the well-being of the birth mother. Had the same energies that found a home for these babies gone instead into finding a way to help many of these girls/women keep and raise their own babies, how much better off so many of them would have been.
I now have a whole new and loving way to view what my sister went through. This is a topic that needs to be talked of—and talked of in the most nonjudgmental way possible.
Richard
Professor Fessler,
I went out today at lunch to buy your book, hoping it will give me some insight as to what my mother went through. She died a few years ago on her 70th birthday. When she was in the hospital, delirious and hallucinating from a serious infection, I learned that my mother was one of the women you write about. She spent hours crying and begging, “Bring me my baby.” When she regained consciousness she did not recall telling me anything but I spoke with her about it and she did—in very few words—confirm her ordeal. She was weak and very sick. I was never able to get more information before she passed.
In that moment at the hospital, her entire life made sense to me. She was a woman who had a sense of sadness and longing her whole life. It burdens me beyond comprehension to think of her sadness and despair and of her never being able to speak of it or share it with anyone.
Marie
Hello Ann,
I am listening to your interview with Diane Rehm and feeling waves of emotion sweeping through my spirit. I need to find my daughter.
The most I could get from the Catholic priest who arranged for my girlfriend to go to California in 1968 was that the baby was a girl and was born on March 4th or 5th. He told me he wasn’t sure, but I’ve long believed it was a way to keep me from finding this child. I was 20 at the time, and my girlfriend was 21. I have not learned anything about the baby other than what the priest told me.
From time to time over the years I have attempted to find her and am still very interested in finding her, to know that she is okay, to learn what kind of life she has had, and if she has thought of me, or thought to look for me.
At that time, I was a student at a Catholic college and lived with my parents. My parents were hysterical over this, threatened to cut me from their wills, even throwing me out of the house a number of times over the course of several months. I developed a severe case of shingles from the stress of it all, but that was seen as part of my punishment.
I don’t have a first name; the date of birth I have is questionable. I’ve run out of leads.
David
Dear Ann,
I have loved a man for the past 10 years, a child born to a girl who went away. Thoughts are tumbling…a lump in my throat…I’m finding it difficult to put feelings into words.
He found her recently—a whole family, a full brother—I went with him to meet them. There are no words, only lovely tears.
He has incredible similarities to some of the women in your book…inability to attach to people who love him, to commit, to feel at home, always feeling like he doesn’t fit in. It has been a struggle for him his whole life.
We lay in bed this afternoon, each reading our own copy of your book. We have shared many books in our time together. Never one like this.
Sincerely,
Ellen
Dear Ann,
In the mid-60s I was living in a suburb of St. Paul when a cousin who was a Lt. in the Navy appeared on my doorstep with one suitcase and very pregnant. Since I am a gay male, she evidently thought I would offer a safe refuge since we both had an unspeakable secret. At that time I had an efficiency (no bedroom) apartment. We had grown up together. Our mothers were sisters. While she was there we had our laughs and we did our share of crying, yet we survived. Those days harbored a cruel society but we made the most of what we had.
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
A Note on the Interviews
WHEN 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.
Notes
CHAPTER 2: BREAKING THE SILENCE
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).
CHAPTER 3: GOOD GIRLS V. BAD GIRLS
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 Beautifu
l: 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.