Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / December 2006

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061220/LIFESTYLE/612200402/1005

Teen moms told to live 'as if it never happened'

Doctors labeled them mentally ill and unfit

Marney Rich Keenan / The Detroit News

The push to put babies of unwed mothers up for adoption in the three
decades after World War II was embraced by the entire culture of the
time -- public policymakers, mental health professionals and social
workers included.

Many of the girls were sent away to maternity homes across the country.
By the mid-1960s, there were about 400 maternity homes nationwide, most
of them run by the Salvation Army or Florence Crittenton agencies,
Catholic nuns and individual hospitals that set up separate dormitories
for the girls.

With the pregnancy hidden and the baby out of sight, the girls were
told they could resume their lives "as if it never happened." Now many
birth mothers' support groups have a name for that phrase. They call it
the "as-if game" to reflect the myth perpetuated by well-intentioned
parents and social workers.

The psychiatric approach toward these young women, then described in
journals as "damaged goods" who "loved well but not wisely" and who
made a "sinful mistake" was to diagnose them as mentally disturbed, and
thus unfit to be mothers.

In 1965, two Harvard University psychiatrists wrote: "Every unmarried
mother is to some degree a psychiatric problem the victim of mild,
moderate or severe emotional or mental disturbance."

was a patriarchal society back then," says Leslie Hollingsworth, an
associate professor of social work at the University of Michigan.

"Women were not defined as mothers because they gave birth to children.
They were defined as mothers if they were raising their children. And,
too, adoption has always been a class issue.

"These girls who relinquished were not only seen as incapable of having
the resources to raise their children, they were also condemned because
of the stigma of illegitimacy."

By contrast, black unwed mothers were rarely pressured into giving up
their babies for adoption. Instead, they largely took care of their
own, bringing their babies back home to be raised by their extended
family. Historians theorize that after slavery, African-Americans
refused any kind of separation of their families.