Fessler, Ann H. The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. NY: Penguin Press, 2006 354 pages.
Ann Fessler is a professor of photography at Rhode Island School of Design and in 2003-2004 she was awarded the Radcliffe Fellowship, a prestigious and highly competitive fellowship. During her fellowship she conducted research about women who surrendered their children for adoption for her audio and video project, but the extensive research morphed into a book. Fessler has a close connection to adoption because she is an adoptee herself, and at the age of 56 she met her birthmother for the first time.
This is a collection of personal stories of birth mothers during the Baby Scoop era alongside with Fessler’s research about the emotional toll this decision had on all the parties involved. The general audience should be aware many of these are only a small fraction of the stories of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption.
Rating: 1) I would highly recommend this book for both an academic audience and general audience who are interested in the stories of an era where birth mothers were forced to surrender their children for adoption.
Clemens Library already owns this book.
In today’s society it is becoming more common to have a baby out of wedlock and for the parents to raise the child together even if they are not married. However that has not always been the case in the history of the United States. After World War II the Baby Scoop era started and continued until the 1980’s. During this time, a million and a half women were coerced into surrendering their children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure. It was socially unacceptable to be pregnant and not married during this era. Families sent their daughters away in disgrace to maternity homes in order to save the mother and child from a lifetime of shame. In 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, she examines this time period in the perspective of the mothers and the journey they went on from the finding out about the pregnancy to meeting their surrendered children decades later.
A recurring theme Fessler brings to the reader’s attention is the role of the Church in the pressuring of the women to give up their children for adoptive. Fessler never blamed the Church for the hardship these women endured but demonstrated it through the personal stories of these women. A great deal of the memories gave details on how priests and nuns of the Catholic Church coerced expecting mothers to surrender their child for adoption. Some priests tried to scare the young birth mothers, usually still teenagers, by threatening their child would never go to heaven and spend eternity in purgatory. The child could not be baptized if the parents were not married which the priests used to leverage the mothers to relinquish their babies. Also many times the nuns would be in charge of the maternity homes and hospital wards and they advised the importance of the child being raised in a two parent household. In one woman’s story a nun at the hospital said, “You’re gonna forget all about this, you’re gonna go home and you’re gonna meet a nice young man, and you’re gonna get married, and you’re gonna have other babies, and you’re never even gonna remember you had this one” (89). In stories it tells about nuns who repeatedly told the women they would easily forget about these children, but giving up their children at birth haunted the birth mothers for the rest of their lives. It was not only the Church who failed in guiding these young mothers but also the parents, the father of the child, social workers, hospital works, and judicial workers who had a part in making feel the mother feel inferior and coercing them in the surrender of the child.
The Birth and Surrender chapter demonstrated how alone the birth mothers were at the time and without support throughout the pregnancy. Fessler repeatedly expressed these women were often separated from the married women at the hospital and casted into a room alone while they endured child labor in solitude. Many times the mothers were denied even seeing their child after the delivery even when they demanded to see their newborn. In Karen I’s story, she was a lucky one who was able to spend an hour with her daughter before her child was taken away. During that precious time as she rocked her newborn she explained “I didn’t have any choices. I had to do what they told me to do. I had nowhere to go. I had no one to help me” (160). Many of these women felt powerless and had no one around who understood what they were going through. At the time, the social workers, parents, and hospital workers thought they were helping these young women trying to discourage the bond that was formed between the mother and child, trying to make the surrender less difficult. However, these workers did not account for the unbreakable bond that already occurred between the mother and child. The personal stories demonstrated how the mothers had overwhelming love for their child, and being denied led to many aftermath problems.
Fessler was able to incorporate not only the stories of the birthmothers, but the public knowledge of adoption at the time. She would set the reader up on how life was during this era.
It was during an era where the mothers would be disowned for having a child out of wedlock and would not be able to find employment to support the child. With no knowledge of resources to help keep their children, the mothers felt trapped in giving their child up. This scenario showed how skewed the public image was of adoption and allowed the reader to realize how unaware society was of the hardships these young women went through. It gave a false sense of serenity and easiness for the birth mother to relinquish their son or daughter for adoption.
Ann Fessler’s book is an incredible resource when discussion the topic of birthmothers in the Baby Scoop era. She discusses every stage of the process from the background of the time period, initial stages in the pregnancy, life in the maternity homes, steps of the adoption process, and the aftermath of it all. It not only informative but brings up important ethical issues about adoption. The major ethical issue Fessler addresses in her book is how the women were coerced into giving up the child for adoption. Almost every single personal story expressed how they wished to keep the baby but too many influential people were against them. The women were sometimes denied standard medical care, information about services, and were sometimes forced to surrender their child. It was the redundancy of the stories which made the ethical issue stand strong because it was evident and irrefutable in the many different personal experiences of the birthmothers during the Baby Scoop era.
Another ethical issue addressed was how society treated these unwed mothers. The father of the child was never to blame and it solely lied on the responsibility of the pregnant party. Society perceived the women as a lower class and denied them essential rights. Many landlords, excluding the maternity homes, would not allow an unwed pregnant woman to rent an apartment, and these women usually did not have family or friends who would support them either. Teenagers were expelled from high school immediately when the school administrations were informed about the pregnancy, but there were no repercussions for the fathers. They were denied jobs or fired on the grounds of their pregnancy. Society often placed these women as second rate citizens which is a major infringement on their basic rights.
Ann Fessler’s book The Girls Who Went Away is a powerful collection of oral stories about the women who were forced to relinquish their children at birth. I would highly recommend this book for anyone but especially for birthmothers during the Baby Scoop era to know they were not alone. I would also highly recommend it for the children who were surrendered during this era. This would allow them to have a deeper understanding of the struggles the birthmothers went through and the hardships they faced. Fessler wanted to unite these women and give them a voice, so they can share all of their stories with the world.
~Sarah B.
Link to the trailer of Ann Fessler's film "A Girl Like Her" which is based of her book
I wanted to make sure I commented on your question you had in class today. Overall, I think the numerous short stories proves to be a strength in the book but I can see how it may be a weakness too. At times each story became a little redundant. I think Fessler wanted to make sure she provided enough of these horror stories in order to get her point across. Each story was able to bring out the book's themes and made it clear the hardship these birth mothers went through.
ReplyDeleteI liked your point on how Fessler brought in the public's opinion on adoption. She was able to paint a picture of what it was like during this era for reader's who don't have the knowledge of these period in history. Society really had no idea what they were doing to these birth mothers. It was always thought they were doing them a great service by forcing them to give up their children when in all reality they were setting these birth mothers up for a lifetime of hardship.
A theme you brought up that added to my understanding of the book was the Church and their effect on these birth mothers. The Church also failed to help these women out and guide them in the right direction. It amazes me that priests could tell these birth mothers that their child wouldn't go to heaven in order to threaten them into giving up their child. I view the Church as somewhere comforting and helpful and I can't imagine being told this from a place of worship.
I really like your book review and think you touched on all the main points Fessler bring forth. The one thing I talked about was how I related this to Jackie, one of our guest speakers, and her story. Personal stories make for the most powerful accounts and really show what it was like for these birth mothers behind closed doors.
-Jordan