I have just written a blog reviewing Ann Fessler’s book The Girls who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade. It’s an awfully long blog for a book report. Yet I felt I couldn’t do this book justice in one blog.
This blog is some personal musings of mine. I’ve just spent most of the day rereading the book for the third time.
Of course I have known that birthmothers of 1945-1973 were often acceding to pressure from their parents, boyfriends, or schools, which did not welcome (and often did not allow) pregnant girls or women to attend.
Yet, it was still stunning to me to realize how coercive the entire environment was for these birthmothers. Fessler powerfully evokes the bonds of family approval and societal norm. Many of the mothers report being told that they did not deserve to have these babies, the babies deserved a better home, they couldn’t disappointment the couples who were waiting to adopt, those couples had so many more advantages to offer the child…etc.
Some mothers were directly told they couldn’t take the baby home until they paid the full cost of their room and board and the baby’s care. Many were told by their families that they couldn’t come home with their babies at all. Some were told that their parents’ health was suffering under the stress of what their daughters had “done to them”, or that parents were in danger of losing their jobs for what their daughters had done.
I was also stunned to read of the cold way many unmarried women were treated by social workers and hospital staff.
Even when there was no single statement which might be technically called coercion, the reader gets a sense of the relentless drumbeat of negativism these mothers faced.
The mothers reported not having legal advice or having been told about social programs, food stamps, or anything that would help them have their children.
One mother pointed out that she did passively agree to letting the child be placed. Still, it’s hard to understand how some of these girls could resist the pressure. I can still remember myself twenty-five years ago. I remember thinking that I was all grown up, but at the same time knowing that I really was a lot more dependent on my parents than I wanted to admit. I was unable to imagine myself apart from the family.
I think this book’s greatest strength is in the details in the storytelling of Fessler and the mothers. It makes us feel like we are there and we can empathize with them. Fessler says one of her hopes is that adoptees will read the book and realize that they were not unwanted, that in many cases the birth parents very much wanted to parent them.
Please see these related blogs:
Book Review: The Mulberry Bird