Product Description

A powerful and groundbreaking revelation of the secret history of the 1.5 million women who surrendered children for adoption in the several decades before Roe v. Wade

In this deeply moving work, Ann Fessler brings to light the lives of hundreds of thousands of young single American women forced to give up their newborn children in the years following World War II and before Roe v. Wade. The Girls Who Went Away tells a story not of wild and carefree sexual liberation, but rather of a devastating double standard that has had punishing long-term effects on these women and on the children they gave up for adoption. Based on Fessler's groundbreaking interviews, it brings to brilliant life these women's voices and the spirit of the time, allowing each to share her own experience in gripping and intimate detail. Today, when the future of the Roe decision and women's reproductive rights stand squarely at the front of a divisive national debate, Fessler brings to the fore a long-overlooked history of single women in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies.

In 2002, Fessler, an adoptee herself, traveled the country interviewing women willing to speak publicly about why they relinquished their children. Researching archival records and the political and social climate of the time, she uncovered a story of three decades of women who, under enormous social and family pressure, were coerced or outright forced to give their babies up for adoption. Fessler deftly describes the impossible position in which these women found themselves: as a sexual revolution heated up in the postwar years, birth control was tightly restricted, and abortion proved prohibitively expensive or life endangering. At the same time, a postwar economic boom brought millions of American families into the middle class, exerting its own pressures to conform to a model of family perfection. Caught in the middle, single pregnant women were shunned by family and friends, evicted from schools, sent away to maternity homes to have their children alone, and often treated with cold contempt by doctors, nurses, and clergy.

The majority of the women Fessler interviewed have never spoken of their experiences, and most have been haunted by grief and shame their entire adult lives. A searing and important look into a long-overlooked social history, The Girls Who Went Away is their story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #722506 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-04
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to keep the baby," says Joyce, in a story typical of the birth mothers, mostly white and middle-class, who vent here about being forced to give up their babies for adoption from the 1950s through the early '70s. They recall callous parents obsessed with what their neighbors would say; maternity homes run by unfeeling nuns who sowed the seeds of lifelong guilt and shame; and social workers who treated unwed mothers like incubators for married couples. More than one birth mother was emotionally paralyzed until she finally met the child she'd relinquished years earlier. In these pages, which are sure to provoke controversy among adoptive parents, birth mothers repeatedly insist that their babies were unwanted by society, not by them. Fessler, a photography professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, is an adoptee whose birth mother confessed that she had given her away even though her fiancé, who wasn't Fessler's father, was willing to raise her. Although at times rambling and self-pitying, these knowing oral histories are an emotional boon for birth mothers and adoptees struggling to make sense of troubled pasts. (May 8)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Perhaps it's no surprise that this story has gone untold for so long, considering the personal nature of the subject and the moral dilemma heaped upon the young women who gave their babies up for adoption. What is astonishing is that Fessler, a photographer and video installation artist writing her debut book, manages to tell this compelling story with a perfectly honed sense of restraint and respect. She handles the large volume of source material nimbly, letting each individual story breathe. The only complaint is that her research method—using a self-selected group—isn't up to snuff for academic rigor. In the face of such glowing critical praise, that lone complaint seems, well, a little academic.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Between 1945 and 1973, when unwed motherhood was considered shameful and abortion was generally illegal, 1.5 million babies were relinquished for adoption. Fessler, who was herself adopted, offers an incredible and deeply moving look at the personal cost suffered by the women who gave up their babies, voluntarily and involuntarily. More than 100 women spoke to Fessler about the shame of unwed pregnancy compounded with the guilt over giving away the child as well as the life of secrecy and lies thereafter. Many of the young women were temporarily banished from their communities, sent away to maternity schools to deliver their babies, and then returned to what was supposed to be "normal" life. But for many, the experience changed forever their relationships with their parents, the fathers of their babies, and subsequent husbands and children. Years later, many of the women struggled with the question of reuniting with their children as laws on adoption and social mores changed. Fessler recounts her own journey to find and reunite with her birth mother in this heartrending look at the untold story of American women compelled to surrender their children. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

An unforgettable and important account of social and political history
The subtitle says it all: this is the hidden history of women who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe vs. Wade. Author Ann Fessler balances her chapters with first-person narratives from both the women who gave up children and from adopted children. Fessler's book explores the shame of getting pregnant in the post-WW II era, the lack of birth control education, the lack of medical birth control for unmarried women, and the hurry of "good" families to bury the mortifying secret product of premarital sex. At its core, the book is about psychological pain, for both mother and child. This pain and confusion lasts for a lifetime.

I grew up with sex education, had access to reproductive planning clinics, and went to a high school that had a day care center on site. Modern women take our choices for granted--the choice to use birth control, the choice to keep a child as an unmarried mother, the choice to have an open, structured adoption, the choice to have a closed adoption, and the choice for safe, legal abortion. This was an eye-opening examination of choices (or lack thereof) over the last fifty years.

Fessler has no agenda other than educating the reader about the hidden histories of these shamed, embarrassed unwed mothers. Chapters focus on specific issues such as birth control education, the social stigma of unmarried pregnancy, double standards for men and women, houses that women were shipped off to, the adoption agencies and processes, and the aftermath of adoption. She uses personal narratives to flesh out her history book, but Fessler does not edit the histories to make any specific political point. Her subjects had widely varying experiences and reactions, all of which are captured herein.

10 star MUST read... for women and men
Every now and then a book comes along that gripes your heart and makes you believe that men and women need to read it. This is that kind of a book. Contray to what one reviewer says, abortion is not encouraged in this book, much less mentioned at all, since this is about the years before Roe v Wade.

Simple, elegant and painfully honest. A glimpse into the last fifty years and what millions, literally, of women endured often in a quest to protect a families image. An era when people didn't even say someone was 'pregnant' but were 'expecting.' When television shows even with married people, didn't allow a double bed, but single beds.

Never mind the horrendous mental pain that was done to the women, often lasting their entire life times. Never mind the fact that the lies and shame foisted on these women was inhumane and as un-christian as one could be.

The stories of all the women and where they grew up, how they broke the news to their parents and what happened next is nothing short of spell binding. How young women gathered together in unwed mother homes went by first name only, didn't know what to expect when pregnant, how inhumane and yes, mean medical personnel treated them, and the unspoken harm mentally these women endured.

Their honesty in talking about the hypocrisy of society and how you could be a good girl who had sex once and ended up pregnant or a nice girl who had sex often but were simply lucky and didn't get pregnant, and how cruel females could/can be when one of their own is hurting. Or how one girl laid down on the back seat whenever her family left the house, because they had told friends etc that their daughter was away helping an ill aunt. Or the young girl who wasn't allowed to answer the door for the same reason, and then late one evening they sneak her and her Mom to the train station where they travel to another state to an unwed mothers home.

And the easy out the boys had. With them often forcing sex on a girl with the tried and true come on lines, only to dump her once she ended up pregnant. One guys even had the nerve to have his fraternity buddies say they had slept with his girl friend so he wouldn't be stuck having to marry her.

Its so easy these days to forget or not even know that thirty short years ago young women were being forced, to give up babies with the snow job that it wouldn't be that hard and that they could then 'get on with their lives'. Like on page 89 where the author writes; 'The nun came over to the hospital and I spent a whole lot of time just sobbing my heart out to her, just crying and crying, and she finally said, 'You know what? You're gonna forget all about this, and 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'. Like knowing you carried a baby within you, felt it move, gave birth to it, and felt your breasts fill with milk, heard your baby cry, would all simple vanish as if it never happened once the baby was adopted? Talk about the dark ages!

Reading of how this wasn't the case at all pained me because I know that having a child myself there is NO way a woman can birth a child and then pretend it never happened. Or the women who were told to never tell their husbands they had had a child out of wedlock because he would divorce her and seek custody of their children, siting her as an unfit mother. One woman who had been married and in such deep pain, found herself separated from her husband and one evening she breaks down and tells him and as she notes, he became the gentle, kind man she always wanted, but by then it was to late.

Its astonishing that in a country that speaks so fondly of the good old days, and how pro family we were as a nation, that such un pro family lies were encouraged or demanded. How we as a country encouraged people to pretend, as well as hurt millions of women. And all those millions of babies who grew up thinking they were not wanted, when just the opposite was true. These were years when most young women wanted so badly to marry and be mothers, yet were cut down, and made to feel shame when in fact had their parents, schools actually educated them on the dangers of unprotected sex, perhaps the young women would have been better informed and able to demand the guys get their sexual relief somewhere else or contain it.

And so many if not most of the women talk of how hard it was to ever trust or get close to people. Even the men they were married. Because society had told them to forget and move on. Pretend that all was ok. When in fact the same society stressed being honest. Like Jennette on page 120 who was living in a small town in Washington State, who became pregnant and pretended to be in San Francisco where her sister lived, looking for work. She had one maternity dress and stayed hidden at her sisters, had the baby, done everything she was told about pretending it never happened.

Moved back to Washington State where she then got a job at the Hanford Project in eastern Washington State, where she 'was putting the badges in the machine to see if they had any radiation'. She then finds herself at age eighteen in the supervisors office being chewed out for not being 'honest' about having a baby out of wedlock months earlier and that the communists could use it to blackmail her into giving them top secret information about the work at Hanford. Again the whole rock and a hard place double standard, of being told to never talk or tell about an unwed pregnancy and then if found out being ridiculed for not being honest. Is it any wonder so many of these young women ended up turning to alcohol or anything else that would kill the pain and confusion?

And the lies the adoption agencies concocted about the birth parents being athletic, educated, from well to do families is mind boggling. It was if the baby was a product they wanted to sell to the best bidder. If these young women were being called 'whores' to their face by these 'professionals' lord knows what these 'professionals' were saying to these innocent newborns as they held them in their arms. Like Lydia on page 310 says 'I came to really resent the language that was used to describe me and my experience.' Using words she calls 'loaded language' that is emotionally charged. It's very judgmental and biased to one side. So many women echo her sentiments that they were educable, trainable, looking for guidance but were shut out and simply told what to do. No questions asked. She continues 'If I'd had support and mentoring, I would have made a wonderful mother for my son.'

The sad thing is, young women are still being coerced into giving up their babies, with lies and hype. Young women are still being given mixed messages, that will hurt them. Sad thing is few people outside of these women who have lost their children to adoption and a small group of open adoption advocates even give care about the LONG term mental health of the woman. Thus the more things change the more things stay the same.

A Moving, Stunning, Must Read
In Lois Lowry's young adult science fiction book The Giver, a young girl hopes to receive a birthmother assignment. Her mother's sharp response was, "Lily!...Don't say that. There's very little honor in that Assignment. The birthmothers never even get to see the new children."

Very little honor indeed. I've been a member of the birthmother sisterhood for 30 years. I relinquished my daughter to adoption in 1976, three years after Roe v. Wade. Thankfully I wasn't forced to go away, had a strong say in my decision, and was spared much of the guilt and shame expressed by the courageous, selfless women featured in The Girls Who Went Away. In fact, I received a lot of negative criticism for choosing to have my child. I heard "why didn't you just get rid of it" from "friends" and acquaintances and even the nurse who was in the room when I awoke from the anesthesia. Just try to imagine delivering a baby with no one holding your hand or soothing your brow. There are simply no words for what has to be one of the loneliest, most tragic human experiences. Regardless of the paths traveled by young women faced with a crisis pregnancy, the results are all the same: their lives are dramatically, permanently altered and they all share the same harsh reality--they're childless mothers.

Why revisit such a painful, tragic part of my history? Why let myself get a lump in my throat after reading a few pages? Because I owe it to these women who, some for the very first time, had the courage to speak out and reveal the inhumane treatment they experienced during what should have been the most wonderful moment in their lives. Their stories deserve to be heard, need to be heard. Those unfamiliar with this embarrassing moment of our country's history will be stunned by the punishments that hardly fit the "crimes" of these incredible, tenacious women. In one of my favorite passages,
Yvonne discusses how her whole life has been based on shame: "You hear about people's lives being touched by adoption. It's no damn touch. I mean, that just drives me nuts. You're smashed by adoption. I mean, it alters the mothers' lives forever." I have used the phrase "touched by adoption" regularly over the years, but Yvonne's description is far more accurate. Everyone facing a crisis pregnancy--the ill-prepared mother and father, their parents, siblings, and beyond--are smashed to pieces from the fallout of adoption.

Read it slowly, carefully. The Girls Who Went Away should be required reading for every high school and college student; I'm certain it would help young adults be more thoughtful and mindful about sex. More importantly, The Girls Who Went Away should be read by every single person who is considering creating a family by adoption. While adoption has mercifully become kinder and gentler over the past 25 years or so, it's still not an ideal institution, there's still a great deal of work to be done. It's time of all of us to get our heads out of the sand and work together. Whatever side of the right to life/pro choice fence you sit on, I'm sure you'll rethink your position after meeting the wonderful women of The Girls Who Went Away.

Ann Fessler deserves all the great reviews and high praise she's received for raising awareness and shedding light on this controversial subject; indeed, I hope she's recognized with several awards. Should the reader be interested in futher enlightenment, the movie The Magdalene Sisters is highly recommended.