Young single women sadly losing their babies to adoption: USA and Australia.

In the 1960s, a group of unwed mothers wrestled with their decisions to give birth in secret at St Paul Minnesota’s Booth Memorial Hosp­ital. With the help of revealing interviews, historian Kim Heik­k­ila told their stories and shed light on the consequences of the mid-C20th’s devastating sexual double standard. In 1952-6 alone, c1.5 million babies were placed for adoption in US.

Teenage mother about to have her newborn baby torn away

Long Lost Family

Booth Memorial Hosp­ital

Minnesota History, Vol 65, #6, Summer 2017

In 1961, Heikkila’s mother gave birth to a daughter at Booth Memorial at 21 and placed the child for adoption. She kept the adopt­ion secret for 30+ years and only reunited with her daughter in 1994, when Heik­kila learned she had a sister. Booth Memorial was just one of hundreds of maternity homes throughout the U.S.

Abortion was illegal in the U.S, sex education scant and social pre­s­sure against illegitimate children drove women into the homes. There they were cared for throughout their pregnancies and del­iveries.

Heikkila used Booth Memorial to examine the phenomenon of unwed mot­h­ers’ homes and the secretive adoptions back then. Using 1963 interviews with the hos­pit­al­’s pat­ients conducted by social work Prof Gisela Kon­opka (Minnesota Uni), she revealed desperation, shame, resolve.

Pregnancy was referred to as “being in trouble”, and the women felt they had no other choice. Though the interviews show women who ultim­ate­ly chose to surrender their children, their delib­er­ations were pain­ful and made in an atmosphere that strongly encouraged relinquishment.

In its advertising, Booth Hospital boasted about providing relaxation, spiritual renewal and a good beginning for the babies. Those women who agreed to give up their children received better treat­ment than those who didn’t. Most of the women planned to return to their communities without revealing the existence of the child, feeling pressure to prot­ect their families’ and their own reputations.

The young women at Booth had had better plans for their lives i.e to be mothers in stable, loving, married fam­ilies. But these goals threatened to derail with the unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. They also wanted to protect their bab­ies by ensuring they grew up in supportive famil­ies. But mostly these young women could best serve society and them­selves, they were told, if they relinquished their child for adop­t­ion. Then they could get on with their lives, at the same time reward­ing married women who were, by definition, fit mothers.

After losing a baby, the young mother’s grief could be intense and long lasting. Her pain was seen as punishment for her immorality i.e falling pregnant whilst single. Today open adoptions are much more common. But the pain and shame of secret pregnancies, and loss, still echoed through the personal stories of mothers and adoptees.

Birth fathers were generally disregarded and blamed for corrupting innocent girls.

**

Until the mid C20th, a receiving home was where children were accomm­od­ated temporarily when first taken into care or for short-term residence for children being transferred between placements. In Melbourne it meant a temporary placement for pregnant single girls.

St Joseph's Receiving Home in Grattan St Melbourne was originally run by a local woman, Margaret Goldspink, who had been informally ass­isting dest­it­ute pregnant women for many years, supported by Fat­her O’Con­n­ell of Carlton. Located near the important Women’s Hospital, the home prov­ided a safe, private place to stay during the last stages of preg­nancy. Mrs Goldspink also offered the home as a place for mothers to return to after their child was born, until they had somewhere to live.

Nuns caring for new born babies, 1967

Getty

St Joseph's Receiving Home in Grattan St Melbourne

Opened in 1905, photographed in mid 1960s.

If a girl who was a Ward of the State in a children's instit­ut­ion be­came pregnant, she was likely to be transferred into a matern­ity home of the same denomination.

Many unmarried mothers were separated from their children after their stay in a matern­ity home and hospital, and their children were adopted. Others found it impossible to care for their children and earn a living, with the result that children ended up in out-of-home care.

While adoption was seen as the most acceptable solution for unwed mothers, evolving societal attitudes and changes to government support for single mothers lead to a gradual drop in adoption rates. This was further strengthened when the Victorian government extended its Family Assistance in 1969 to include single mothers.

With the Federal election of the Labour Government in 1972, and foll­ow­ing the feminist activist movement, single mothers were finally ent­itled to receive the Supp­or­t­ing Mothers' Benefit (1973) on the same basis as all other unsupp­orted mo­th­ers. This shift reflected a more ac­cepting attit­ude from Australian society towards unwed mothers. From the early 1970s, fewer Victorian ch­ildren were available for adoption, and charitable services for single-mother-families shift­ed away from mat­er­n­ity homes.

Australian adoption then was a confidential, irrevocable process where unwanted babies were placed predominantly with childless couples, reliev­ing the state of the burden of their care. c200,000 child­ren had been adopted since the first adoption legislation was enacted in 1896.

But once abortion was legalised in Victoria in 1969, most women felt angry about being forced to have an unwanted baby or being forc­ed to give a baby away. Now they had a choice! Adoption rates dropped from 50+% in 1967 to just 10% in 8 years later.

Read The Conversation or see "Given or Taken" on Four Corners Sept 2017.