Shrouded in Secrecy: Forced Adoption

It's impossible to know how many young, unmarried women have given up their babies for adoption because until recently, the topic was shrouded in secrecy. Of course, some of these women willingly gave up their babies but thousands of women were coerced or forced to sign adoption papers. It's likely that we all have relatives who had to hide their pregnancies.

In post-war Canada between 1945 and 1988, approximately 400,000 unmarried women (mostly teenagers) were pressured to surrender their babies. The numbers are staggering. This period is known as the "Baby Scoop Era." Forced adoption also took place in other countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. In the United States, more than 1.5 million women were forced into giving up their babies.

For too long, these women have been seen as having voluntarily relinquished their children rather than surrendering them by force for adoption.

Until the 1970s, young people didn't receive adequate sex education. There was no Our Bodies, Ourselves to enlighten you. Parents were tight-lipped about how babies were made. If sex was discussed, it's unlikely any girl ever heard that it could be enjoyed for pleasure, not just procreation. You were expected not to do it.

Girls (and boys, separately) would be herded into the school gymnasium to watch a film. The girls' film focused mainly on menstruation but you'd also be shown a segment about reproduction. You'd see an image of a sperm fertilizing an egg but you weren't necessarily told about the events leading up to the meeting of egg and sperm. Birth control wasn't even on the agenda. Following the screening, you'd receive a pamphlet about menstruation but you still hadn't the foggiest idea about the sex act, itself. Many girls were left completely in the dark when it came to knowledge about conception.

Not surprisingly, many single, young ladies were shocked to find themselves pregnant.

Abortion wasn't really a choice in the past for religious reasons, philosophical reasons, health reasons or legal reasons. Abortion was illegal in Canada until 1969. Illegal abortions were performed but frequently led to massive infections and death. In the United States, abortion was decriminalized in 1973 but remains a controversial political issue to this day. Anti-abortion legislation is on the books in several states, and there has been a steady decrease in access to abortion.

Not all girls became pregnant by their boyfriend. Some girls were coerced into having sex or they were raped. These girls were made to feel that the violation was their fault, and that they were responsible for luring a man into sexual relations.

There was a HUGE social stigma attached to sex outside of marriage and unwed motherhood. This cannot be understated.

Society marginalized the unwed mother, even in popular culture through books and films such as these...

Not Wanted, a movie released in 1949. After abandoning her home town to follow a travelling musician, a young woman is abandoned by him and then finds herself pregnant.

Unwed Mother, a movie released in 1958.
The plot concerns a country girl who moves from a farming community to Los Angeles. She falls in love with a smooth-talking grifter who gets her pregnant and then abandons her. After visiting a drunken abortionist, she decides to give the baby up for adoption but eventually comes to regret that decision and pursues the foster parents who adopted her child.

Single and Pregnant by Larry Maddock, a book published in 1962. "1 out of 7 unmarried girls will become illicitly pregnant this year."

According to society, "Good girls" did not have sex. Period.

Nonetheless, good girls were having sex. Some were exploring their sexuality while others felt pressured by their boyfriends to "go all the way." If their "delinquent" behaviour was discovered, they risked being labeled "bad girls" which would result in being ostracized from their families and friends. You could lose your entire group of friends and family if you admitted you were having sex. Single girls who had sex were considered "sluts" or "whores."

Many other girls were completely unaware about intercourse and how you got pregnant. One common myth was that you couldn't get pregnant the first time you had sex. So if a girl "went too far" on a date, she was alarmed to find out she was pregnant.

Some young men promised their girlfriends that they would "withdraw" during sex, one of the least effective methods of birth control. And speaking of birth control, before the late 1960s/early 1970s, birth control was very difficult to obtain. A federal law was passed in Canada in 1892 to prohibit the sale or advertising of birth control. Even married women were discouraged from asking for birth control.

The birth control pill became available in 1960 but for therapeutic reasons only, not as a form of birth control. Imagine how difficult it must have been for a single woman!

Condoms were condemned by some moralists and even by some medical professionals but by the end of the 19th century they were the most common form of birth control. Condoms were available in drug stores but were hidden behind the counter. A young man asking to purchase a package of condoms not only risked embarrassment, the pharmacist might call his parents and report his activity.

A single, pregnant woman could be fired from her job or expelled from school. She was severely judged by society.

Your choices then, came down to this: either get married (thus becoming a respectable woman) or give up your baby for adoption.

Some people in power had other ideas on how to solve the problem...

Headline from 1960 in the United States

Most parents were outraged to find that their daughters were "in trouble." Few supported their daughter's decision to raise the child on their own. Single motherhood just wasn't acceptable in our society. A girl could be thrown out of the house and left penniless to fend for herself if she wanted to keep her baby. Some angry parents tried to force their daughters' boyfriends to marry them. More often than not, the man refused or the man's parents insisted that he refuse. Sometimes, his parents shamed the young woman to her face and said the pregnancy was all her fault. On the other hand, some young men proposed to their pregnant girlfriends, married them, and they went on to have happy lives together. Quite often, however, they divorced.

Most girls' parents feared that their daughter's pregnancy would bring shame upon the family. The question "what would the neighbours think?" was more important than "what's best for our daughter?"

The answer to the situation was to send your daughter away to a maternity home for unmarried mothers. I use the word "home" loosely as there was nothing homelike or cozy about these institutions. Run almost exclusively by religious organizations and funded by the Canadian government, there were more than 50 of these maternity homes in Canada by the end of the 1960s, and more followed as time went on. It was expected that girls would be punished, rehabilitated and learn their lesson at the maternity homes.

Since maintaining your family's reputation in the community was of utmost importance, friends and neighbours were told that the girl had "gone to an aunt's" or that she'd been offered a job opportunity out-of-town.

Upon arrival at the maternity home, the girls would have aliases assigned to them. They were not to tell anyone their real names. They weren't allowed to make friends even though there were many other girls living there. Their mail was often censored, they couldn't make phone calls, and they were locked in at night. Occasionally, outings for the girls were arranged but if a group of girls was seen in public, eggs were thrown at them.

Upon giving birth, they were required to immediately relinquish their child for adoption. Dr. Marion Hilliard of Women’s College Hospital stated that “when she renounces her child for its own good, the unwed mother has learned a lot. She has learned to pay the price of her misdemeanor and this alone, if punishment is needed, is punishment enough.”(Toronto Telegram 1956).

I remember someone who was sent by her parents to Bethesda Hospital, a maternity home in London, Ontario to have her baby in the early 1970s. She gave the baby up for adoption. A new building, the Bethesda Centre replaced the original structure seen in the photo above. In 1994, 18-year-old Pattie Mallette stayed at the Bethesda Centre while awaiting the birth of her son, Justin Bieber. Pattie kept her baby and raised him as a single parent.

Few young unmarried women had a choice as to whether or not they could keep their babies. Their parents, their church, and society saw to it that these girls were forced into giving up their children.

Girls at maternity homes were told that "the right thing to do" was to give up their babies for adoption to decent, deserving married couples; people who could give the child everything that the young woman could not offer her child. If a girl dared to argue that she wanted to keep her baby, she was told she would be an unfit mother, she would be shunned by society, and that her child would be called a "bastard" on the playground. Humiliation and verbal abuse broke these girls' spirits. They were told they were sinful and needed to be punished. They were not informed of their rights. The few young men who did want to take part in their babies' lives were not permitted contact with their girlfriends while they were in the maternity homes. These men were left feeling helpless.

February 19, 1951 cover of LIFE magazine.

Popular magazines of the 1950s and 1960s promoted adoption but led to misconceptions about the mothers. Life magazine's 1951 article, "The Adoption of Linda Joy" gave the impression that unwed mothers were shallow, immature girls who "had a long life ahead." Magazine articles such as this had a wide readership. They convinced the public that unmarried mothers were frivolous young women who didn't want to burden themselves with children, and that they wanted to get rid of their babies. This misunderstanding still lingers today.

Most girls had no idea what to expect physically or emotionally from childbirth. Hospital staff didn't explain anything to them about labour and childbirth. When the time came to give birth, girls' pubic areas were shaved and they were given enemas; shocking and embarrassing experiences for these young women. Because of the lack of sex education both at home and at school, some girls didn't even know what part of the body babies came from! In addition, the girls were not allowed to have the support of friends or family members present at the birth.

In many cases, the newborn babies were whisked away from the girls immediately after birth. Many girls weren't allowed to see or hold their babies at all. Some girls were tied down during the birth. In some instances, doctors covered the girls' faces with sheets so they couldn't see their babies. Some had their chests bound following the birth to prevent lactation. When asked the gender of their babies, some girls were told, "It's none of your business." Some girls were lied to and told that their babies died at birth.

Counselling was not available to the girls. They were told never to speak of the birth to anyone.

When the girls returned home, their parents acted as if nothing had happened. It was a family secret; never to be spoken of again.

Girls were instructed by their parents, pastors and social workers to forget the experience; to pretend that it never happened and to get on with their lives. They were told that some day they would find a husband and have "real" children, and that they would have no recollection of their first birth experience. Of course, forgetting the birth of your child was impossible. When they couldn't forget, as they'd been instructed to do, these young women felt like failures. Not only did they feel like they'd failed their families by becoming pregnant, and failed their babies by giving them up for adoption, they also felt like failures because they couldn't forget.

Many young women fell into depression after they left their babies behind. They suffered grief and sadness for the rest of their lives, and intense feelings of guilt, shame, damaged self-esteem, and health issues. They were told they'd "snap out of it" once they got married and had more children but the negative feelings persisted. These women were traumatized, and the pain never went away.

Support groups for mothers and for adoptees did not begin in earnest until the 1970s. Today, women also have the Internet to share their grief and their issues through chat rooms. However, even today there is ignorance surrounding adoption. There is still a common belief that most women gave up their babies willingly when in fact the percentage was quite small.

In 2018, the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology released a report, The Shame is Ours: Forced Adoptions of the Babies of Unmarried Mothers in Post-war Canada. The report called on the federal government to issue a formal apology for this "disturbing chapter" in Canada's history. Australia's government apologized in 2013. So far, no apology has been offered from the Canadian government.

This episode in history was a violation of human rights.

It's important for the women who surrendered their babies to know that they're not alone; countless other women shared these experiences and were told to "get over it" and to keep it a secret. Many women have gone to their graves without meeting their child or daring to talk about what happened. For those of us who know a mother who lived through this heart-wrenching experience, we can help by listening to these women and understanding. Men who were robbed of their role as fathers have suffered, too. And for the adoptees, especially those adult children dealing with feelings of abandonment, it's important to know that in many cases, their mothers had no choice.

Recommended reading:

Gone to an Aunt's: Remembering Canada's Homes for Unwed Mothers by Anne Petrie. McLelland & Stewart, 1998. (Canadian)

White Unwed Mother: The Adoption Mandate in Postwar Canada by Valerie J. Andrews. Demeter Press, 2018. (Canadian)

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler. Penguin Press, 2006. (American)