Before delving into a brief history of adoption in America, it is important to understand this writer is biased. Having been adopted into a wonderful family and home, it is impossible for me to consider whether adoption is or was the best option for me or my birthmother. After all, I can't miss what I never knew. And as painful as it may have been for my birthmother and her family, I grateful and content with the decision she made at the time. As a parent myself, I cannot fathom being forced to make the decision to give up my son. My birthmother was 22 years-old at the time of my birth and no doubt was uncertain about her future, either as a mother or a single person making her way in the world.
Much of what you are about to read is based on research I've done using the internet and nothing further. I've done my best to use credible sources and cite the articles, writers, and websites I used to put this essay together. Please know this is not a scholarly essay or an attempt to reveal something new. Even though I am adopted I was unaware of some of the adoption agency prior to the mid 1970's and am compelled to share what I've learned.
What follows is a brief history of adoption in America, specifically after World War II. This period of time, known at the Baby Boom period, saw American servicemen return home, marry their sweethearts, buy homes in the suburbs, and begin popping out children at record numbers. A lesser acknowledged contributor to the rising birthrate of the era was unmarried white women. Between 1945 and 1973, nearly 4 million babies were placed adoption. Almost 80% were born to unwed white women in maternity homes throughout the country.1 Sociologists point to a number of factors for this increase, including the liberalization of sexual attitudes and far-reaching restrictions on birth-control, such as The Pill and legalized abortion. Of those 4 million babies placed for adoption, 2 million were born in the 1960's alone. Also, the number of married couples desiring healthy white babies increased.
What seems like a beautiful coincidence, however, raises some serious questions. We'd all like to believe medical professionals and social workers are guided by what's in the patients best interest. However, time and time again we are reminded how easily a conflict of interest can steer people the wrong way. It might sound cold or callus but when something is highly coveted, such as a baby, it can easily become a commodity. Like any commodity, there is a marketplace more than willing to capitalize on such transactions. And every marketplace needs participates; buyers, sellers, marketeers. For example, a letter posted on www.babyscoopera.com, a website dedicated to the research of adoption practices and law, between 1945 and 1972, shows how a Missouri maternity home marketing their product to potential customers. In part, it reads, “By adopting a child from this institution, you are assured of getting a healthy, normal child, which has had a thorough medical examination and has been found free from disease of every character. We also encourage you to have your family doctor make an examination, and if he finds anything irregular, return the baby to us.”2 Is it me, or does it sound like they're selling a used car?
According to historian Marian J. Morton, many U.S. social workers, beginning in the 1940's, believed adoption was preferable over “keeping mother and child together” in less than ideal situations. “Ideal,” of course, being a subjective judgement. In her book, And Sin No More: Social Policy And Unwed Mothers In Cleveland 1855-1990, she writes social workers began “rejecting the idea that all women who had borne children were suitable mothers,” and they should use their judgement to “decide which women should or should not put their infants up for adoption.” 3 Essentially, the social worker, using their judgements, fueled with their own biases, were made the final arbitrator on whether a mother was supported by the system or seen as a potential blight on the system. Obviously, no one would argue with the statement not all mothers, or fathers for that matter, are suited to be parents. However, the standards in which parental ability is measured today are not the same as they were a century ago—or even fifty years ago. Some social commentators today argue children are excessively cared for and coddled and are being raised with a hyper-sensitivity to their wellbeing. On some level, it could be said the paternalistic approach by some social workers or medical professionals were a reflection of the changing social mores on childrearing. Whether this is true or not is moot. The issue at hand is whether social workers were overly harsh or unfairly judgmental when dealing with unwed mothers who came into their clinics seeking options.
Some “experts” on dealing with birthmothers and their families were even more direct. In the 1960 book, Out of Wedlock Pregnancy in Adolescence, Dr. Marcel Heiman writes, “The caseworker must then be decisive, firm, and unswerving in her pursuit of a healthy solution for the girl's problem.” Already, they are reducing her pregnancy to a “problem” that must be solved at all costs, regardless of the outcome to birthmother. Heiman continues, “The ‘I’m going to help you by standing by while you work it through’ approach will not do. What is expected from the worker is precisely what the child expected but did not get from her parents – a decisive ‘No!’ It is essential that the parent (to the birthmother) most involved, psychologically, in the daughter’s pregnancy also be dealt with in a manner identical with the one suggested in dealing with the girl. Time is of the essence; the maturation of the fetus proceeds at an inexorable pace. An ambivalent mother, interfering with her daughter’s ability to arrive at the decision to surrender her child, must be dealt with as though she (the girl’s mother) were a child herself.”4 In other words, disregard the psychological needs of the birthmother and her family and push them towards the adoption option as quickly as possible.
Now, no one would argue a baby should be given the best possible start in life. If the birthmother is in a volatile situation which cannot be improved in short order, perhaps adoption is the best choice. This is not the argument. I know of several situations, close to my own family, where leaving the baby with the birthmother or father would be tantamount to criminal. However, the element which is often overlooked by the general public is the uncomfortable business of adoption. Or, the less seemly term, “baby farming.” When I was adopted in 1969, my parents paid roughly $1,000 to secure my guardianship. In 2015 money, this is roughly $6,300. A hefty sum for most middle-class couples at the time. As it is often said, if you want to know who benefits the most from something, follow the money. Most of the adoption agencies at the time profited from these transactions which enabled them to stay in business. Which begs the question, how many birthmothers were manipulated by medical or social work professionals with a conflict of interest? One, would be too many. And at the beginning of the Baby Scoop Period, medical and social engineers effectively lobbied for legislation which made adoptions secret. Secrecy on any level can lead to deceit, coercion and eventually heartache.
In the early part of the Twentieth Century, open adoption, when one of the birth parents has contact with the adoptive parents, was the norm. Most states offered no provisions in their laws to protect privacy. In the 1930's, this began to change. By the end of the 1950's, virtually all states, on the advice of so-called experts, sealed their birth/adoption records. In Ohio, the state where I live, until March of 2015, adoption records from 1964 to 1996 were sealed and could not be opened without a court order. Records before and after were open for inspection. The concern was meddling by regretful birthparents could upset the stability of a child and his or her adoptive family. Soon, the era of secrecy took hold and the notion of adoptees reuniting with their birthparents became “socially disfavored.”5 Secrecy, of any sort, can lead to deceit and manipulation. For example, an 18-month-long investigation in Australia in 2012 revealed illegal and unethical tactics were incorporated to “dupe” some mothers into giving up their babies between the 1940's and 1980's. Some, were even drugged and forced to sign documents giving up their custodial rights.6 Is it possible these tactics also took place in the United States?
I believe most adoptive parents had no notion or thought about how or where their new babies came from. No doubt they were marketed to and sold on the idea there were babies who desperately needed a home. I'm sure many imagined a birthmother who was young and had been careless and rejected the burden of parenthood without giving it a second thought. I'm sure this is how the commodity was sold. There have been reports of social workers at the time falsifying records and birth parent biographical information in order to paint a more agreeable picture supporting the need for adoption. Would adoptive parents still want to take home a baby if they believed the birthmother had been manipulated into giving him or her up? To me, it borderlines on kidnapping and most would probably not want to be involved in such scandalous trades.
We cannot gloss over the psychological effects these women experienced, both in giving up a child for adoption and being an unwed pregnant woman in the first place. During this period between the 1940's to the 1960's, pregnant unwed women were viewed as a blight on society and wore a social stigma that accompanied this judgement. They were seen as having “broken the rules” and violated the sanctity of motherhood and sexuality by allowing themselves to become pregnant. Meanwhile, decent and deserving women, who were unable to bare children of their own, should be given “the gift” of a child, supplied by these “fallen” and “wayward” women.7 More often than not, they were forced to seek medical treatment in secret, out-of-town unwed mother's home, separated from respectable married women in hospital maternity wards. While at the homes, often referred to as “Magdalene Laundries,” many had their communication with outside world monitored and censored. Men were typically forbidden, in order to keep birthfathers from interfering with adoption plans. And they were reminded everyday their babies would be better off with someone else. In some facilities operated by religious groups, some soon to be birthmothers were required to attend daily devotionals and some were baptized to cleanse themselves of the “dirtiness” of unwed motherhood. They were pariahs and their self-esteem and outlook on life greatly diminished. In a November 1956 article published in the Toronto Daily Telegraph, Dr. Marion Hilliard of Women's College Hospital, wrote, “Unwed mothers should be punished and they should be punished by taking their children away...When she renounces her child for its own good, the unwed mother has learned a lot. She has learned to pay the price of her misdemeanor and this alone, if punishment is needed, is punishment enough.”8
At the other end of the spectrum, the Honorable Justine Wise Polier, a judge in the New York City Domestic Relations Court, wrote in the 1956 book, Adoption and Law, “The mother of the child born out of wedlock is frequently young, frightened and very much alone when she is forced to make the momentous decisions about her future and that of her child. The provision of proper medical care, casework service, a plan for her child, full and honest disclosure as to her legal rights and the consequences of surrendering her child for adoption are essential if the substance rather than the mere form of her legal rights is to be secured. It is when this is not done, when she is not helped to work through to the right decision, that decisions made under duress may and often do lead to unresolved conflicts that may shadow her life. . .”9
I would imagine a woman, already feeling guilty for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, is very likely to be in the most vulnerable psychological state she's ever been in her life. Maybe she has parental support, maybe she doesn't. She's faced with the most difficult decision of her life and it's appalling an unscrupulous social worker or doctor might be punishing her and pushing her to give up the child because “that's what's best for the baby.” What about what's best for the mother? We're their needs ever taken into consideration or were these birthmother's viewed as mere “incubators” for couples who couldn't have children? Post adoption counseling or medical treatment was nearly nonexistent during the highest period of adoptions in the United States. Birthmothers were left to deal with their grief on their own, which often led to reported symptoms similar to PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.)
In a 1986 article published in the Medical Journal of Australia, Dr. John T. Condon writes, “Existing evidence suggests that the experience of relinquishment renders a woman at high risk of psychological (and possibly physical) disability. Moreover very recent research indicates that actual disability or vulnerability may not diminish even decades after the event. ….Taken overall, the evidence suggests that over half of these women are suffering from severe and disabling grief reactions which are not resolved over the passage of time and which manifest predominantly as depression and psychosomatic illness.”10 Dr. Condon wasn't the only expert to make this observations. In a 1999 article in the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, Askren & Bloom wrote, “Relinquishing mothers have more grief symptoms than women who have lost a child to death, including more denial; despair, atypical responses; and disturbances in sleep, appetite, and vigor.”11
For some birthmothers they chose never to revisit motherhood again, undoubtedly broken in spirit by their earlier experience. In a 1971 article entitled Helping Unmarried Mothers, early single-mothers advocate Rose Bernstein wrote, “In sum, society sees to it that by action or by implication, a woman who is having a child out of wedlock will come away from the experience with an inferior sense of herself as a mother, whether she keeps her baby or relinquishes him for adoption. This downgrading of the maternal image, can do serious injury to the later maternal functioning of the woman whose perception of herself as a mother is thus impaired.”12
Bernstein, who died in 2007, worked to improve the lives of single-mothers. In her obituary published in the Boston Globe, she was remembered as helping to “shift the stigma of the 'out of wedlock' mother to the concept of helping unmarred mothers and fathers,” and for pointing “a finger at social agencies for inflicting lasting emotional damage on single mothers.”13
In the 1965 landmark decision Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution protected the right to privacy and the “Comstock Law,” which, among other “obscene” material, prohibited the sale of birth-control medications or devices. Until then many states enforced the law which made the sale of contraceptives illegal. This reversal, along with the introduction of birth control drug The Pill, and the Supreme Court ruling in Roe V. Wade, which allowed unrestricted abortion, the number of adoptions in the United States dropped dramatically. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the peak year for adoptions was in 1970—the year my adoptive parents brought me home—when 89,200 children were placed in adoptive homes. In 1975 the number dropped to 47,700 and finally to around 14,000 in 2003.
I can't honestly know or say what my birthmother experienced while she was dealing with the social worker assigned to her case or the doctors in the unwed mother's home she gave birth. I have a letter she wrote and while I can read the pain in her words about letting me go, I have no way of knowing if she was treated with dignity by them or with scorn. I only hope she was wasn't coerced or manipulated into making a decision she really didn't want to make and the decision was completely hers. However, as I said at the outset, I'm thankful for the life I've had and wouldn't change or wish for anything else. My only purpose in writing this essay is to shine a light on a difficult time in our societies history and maybe give a voice to the many birthmothers, like my mine, who may have suffered in silence.
A week after posting this essay this story from ABC News began making the rounds.
(Please forgive the formatting of my sources. Blogger doesn't allow for easy citation.)
1Solinger, R. (2000).Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade. (p. 95)
2http://babyscoopera.com/adoption-abuse-of-mothers/professionals-marketing-our-children/#sthash.z5Us5a80.dpuf
3AND SIN NO MORE: SOCIAL POLICY AND UNWED MOTHERS IN CLEVELAND 1855 TO 1990, Marian J. Morton, Historian, 1993
4Out-Of-Wedlock Pregnancy In Adolescence, p. 71, 1960, Marcel Heiman, MD.
5The Idea of Adoption: An Inquiry Into the History of Adult Adoptee Acces to Birth Records, Rutgers Univeristy, 2001
6Past Adoption Experiences, National Research Study on the Service Response to Past Adoption Practices, Austrailian Institute of Family Studies, 2012.
7The Crimes Against Unmarried Mothers, Valerie Williams, Origins Canada, 2011
8Toronto Daily Telegraph, Toronto, Canada, November 1956
9Adoption and Law, by Hon. Justine Wise Polier, Judge, Domestic Relations Court, New York City. 1956
10PSYCHOLOGICAL DISABILITY IN WOMEN WHO RELINQUISH A BABY FOR ADOPTION, Dr. John T. Condon (Medical Journal of
Australia) Vol. 144 Feb 3, 1986 (Department of Psychiatry, Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Consultant Psychiatrist)
11Askren, H., & Bloom, K. (1999) Post-adoptive reactions of the relinquishing mother: A review. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and
Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug; 28(4)
12HELPING UNMARRIED MOTHERS, Rose Bernstein, Appeared in “Child Welfare and Social Work,” 1971
13http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/02/28/rose_bernstein_at_98_advocate_for_single_parents/?page=full
