- A Question of Trust
- Intro: The Birth of a Blog
- You and Me Could Write a Bad Romance: Part I
- Bad Romance, Part II: The Couch
- Bastard Package #1
- Hallelujah
- Born This Way
- Baby Girl X
- Another Victim of Love
- True Life
- The Girls Who Went Away
- Love and Other Drugs
- 11 Things Adoptees Love to Hear
- Uh, Never Mind
- Adoptee Kid Lit
- Bastard Princess and the Search for the Holy Grail
- MYOFB
- Awkwardness
- Baby Steps
- Faith, Hope, and Catholic Charities
- Special Delivery
- Green-eyed Monster
- !@#$
- Pandora
- Fantasyland
- Adoptees You May Have Heard Of
- Big MAC Attack
- Material Girl
- VISA and Mastercard Accepted
- Don't Hold Your Breath
- Our Love is Like a Constipated Cat
- A Question of Trust
- Adoption, Hollywood Style
- All in the Family
The Girls Who Went Away
Have you ever been lucky enough to say that a particular book truly changed your life? (And for God’s sake, if the collective works of Tori Spelling or Tucker Max came to mind, keep it to yourself).
Several years ago, I started a part-time job at Barnes & Noble as a bookseller to fund my horsey habit. On my near-constant circuits around the bookfloor, a title on the shelf in the Sociology section immediately caught my eye: The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler. One of the employee perks is being able to check out hardcover books. I didn’t do it right away, though—I stalked the book for a while, first, reading the dust jacket and flipping through it on my breaks. The thought of reading it made me a little sick, but I knew I had to. Girls was the first book I ever checked out there. So although I got a steady, if meager, paycheck and a nice employee discount, I now think that the cosmos made sure I got that job so that I would stumble onto that book.
Girls was the result of Ann Fessler’s research project including a Boston Globe article and travelling exhibition; The project itself was born of an encounter that Fessler, an adoptee herself, had with a stranger in an art gallery: They both had noticed a strong physical resemblance and thought that perhaps they were mother and daughter (the woman had given up a baby for adoption, but the dates didn’t match up with Fessler’s.) The resulting conversation inspired Fessler’s groundbreaking book. In interview form, it captures the heartbreaking stories of articulate young women—most of whom were the stereotypical “girl next door”-in the puritanical post-World War II era before Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion. Sex education in schools was unheard of, and most parents chose to ignore the topic completely out of embarrassment. Judgmental, paternalistic doctors ensured that birth control for unmarried young women was nonexistent. But, as we all know, sex has a way of happening in spite of odds and logic. The girls (NOT their partners) who got caught or pregnant—even if they’d been raped--were labeled “bad girls.”
Since having a baby out of wedlock was viewed as an unforgivable violation of highly idealistic societal norms, even in the “free love” era years of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the young women were seen as heaping shame upon themselves and, more importantly, their families. They were quickly expelled from school and literally hidden behind closed doors and in closets by their mortified parents. Their parents, counselors, doctors, and clergy told them that the only “right” thing to do was to give their baby to a “good” married couple who “deserved” one. (It goes without saying that adoptive families are just like any other in that they may in fact provide a dysfunctional or even dangerous environment for children).
And what of the fathers? Societal double standards let most of them off the hook: Their sexual conquests were encouraged and their responsibilities largely ignored. For the most part, the girls were on their own.
In the dark of night, forced to lie in the backseats of cars to avoid being seen, the girls were hustled off to distant “aunts,” or, more truthfully, “maternity homes” in which they’d live the remainder of their pregnancies with other ostracized pregnant girls so that the neighbors wouldn’t find out. While there, many were farmed out as indentured servants to local families; sometimes they were mocked and attacked on the street. They gave birth to their babies without the benefit of family support, childbirth education, or counseling, punished for their sins against an unforgiving society by being belittled, scorned, and made to endure labor alone, without explanation, empathy, comfort, or pain medication.
Most girls’ babies were taken away as soon as they’d been born; some were allowed limited interaction with them during their stay in the maternity home. Many were coerced into signing their parental rights away while in pain or under the influence of painkillers; others were told they’d be allowed to see their babies once they’d signed, but that never happened. Other girls of limited financial means were told they’d have to trade their babies for payment of their maternity home and hospital bills; a few of these defied the odds by keeping their babies and slowly repaying their captors. They were, however, cautioned that their children would be called bastards on the playground if they chose to keep them.
“Trustworthy” authority figures—social workers, doctors and nurses, and clergy--advised the girls to forget that the birth had ever happened, stop shaming their families, and just go on with their lives. The trauma of having their babies taken away has haunted the girls every single day of their lives since. Many initiated self-destructive behavior to punish themselves for not fighting harder for their children, to feel control over their lives, and to numb their agony.
The girls tell their stories in their own voices. I almost feel as though I’m listening to my own birth mother speak (who knows? I may be). Their honest, raw accounts have awakened a profound sympathy and understanding in me that I’d never felt before. I’d never heard a birth mother’s side of the story before or known the extent of the brutality and oppression of the society that influenced them. I’d always assumed that I’d been simply thrown away by someone who didn’t give a shit about me and had simply opted out for a more carefree life, but these revelations changed EVERYTHING. Was I wrested away from my biomom against her will, too, or was I truly “surrendered”? One of the women interviewed in the book even gave birth in a maternity home in Brookfield, Wisconsin, which is where my birth mother may have stayed. It hits much too close to home.
Whether or not my own biomom was coerced into giving me away, The Girls Who Went Away has profoundly affected my opinion of her and awakened my understanding. (And it hasn’t improved my opinion of the adoption industry, either, by the way. I’m so disappointed and disgusted by the adults, especially the alleged representatives of a loving and forgiving God who should have shown compassion rather than intolerance and scorn for these forsaken young women forced to age too quickly.) I’ve been hoping that she’ll be as expressive and “average” as the likeable girls next door interviewed in the book. If she tells me a similar story, I now have the capacity to open my heart and forgive her in a way that wasn’t possible before. Thank you, Ms. Fessler. http://thegirlswhowentaway.com