by Ann Fessler
In fact, before the 1970s the most reliable blood tests available could not absolutely prove paternity. The best they could do was eliminate 40 percent of the male population from being the father based on blood type. Tests developed in the 1970s could exclude about 80 percent of men. It was not until the 1980s that DNA testing could determine a 99.9 percent likelihood of paternity. Since there was no way to prove fatherhood with absolute certainty in the 1950s and 1960s, if a man denied fatherhood his proclamation often went unchallenged. But very few boyfriends of the women I interviewed denied their role in the pregnancy. Since most of the young women’s families wanted to keep their daughter’s pregnancy a secret, and did not want her to keep her child, proof of fatherhood was not a primary concern. They tried to settle the matter with as little fuss as possible. If the young man’s family was involved at all, they often offered to pay some of the maternity-home expense and considered that the end of their involvement, and of their son’s responsibility.
My boyfriend talked to his parents and then he came over to our house. They wanted me to see their doctor because they thought maybe I wasn’t really pregnant; maybe I was just trying to get him to marry me. He went home and his parents took him back to the University of Florida that night. He called me sobbing, saying, “My parents won’t let me get married.” His mother called my mother and said, “I just wanted you to know if there’s anything that we can do to help you, or if you need any money, we will be glad to give it to you.”
—Leslie
Whether the young women’s parents were compassionate or enraged, nearly all the women I interviewed reported feeling ashamed—not so much for being sexual but for bringing shame upon their families. Many felt that they would do anything their parents wished in order to get back into their good graces.
I think my biggest fear was to be ostracized from everything that I had known up to that day, and from my family. I was a sixteen-year-old high-school student. I had never had to think about anything beyond that. So what I was facing was the look on their faces and just that fall from grace, in my neighborhood, and in my community, and with my family. Not with my friends—I had several other friends who were also pregnant. I mean, it was a thing that was happening. We accepted that it was going to be in the hands of our parents. It was not something that we were going to be able to say, “Here’s what we want to do.”
—Lydia
The treatment young women received from family, friends, professionals, and members of their community deepened their sense of abandonment and often contributed to lifelong struggles with low self-esteem. Those who were still dependent on their parents were cast out of their communities or sequestered in their parents’ home. Many dreaded reentry into their schools and towns, because they were unsure about who knew the truth of their experiences. They were asked by families and professionals to lie to everyone about where they had been and to keep up this charade indefinitely. Most of the women I interviewed have carried with them for the rest of their lives the emotional pain of being ostracized and then having to live a lie, pretending to be someone they were not. Yet they were soon to learn that the shame they felt as a result of their banishment would prove to be only the tip of the iceberg. They had yet to learn about the emotional impact of relinquishing their child, a child who was not yet real to them.
MARGE
I lived in a small town in southwestern Kansas. By small, I mean a town that has twelve hundred people in it—so really small. Of course, everybody knows everybody. This new guy came to town to live with his uncle and there were stories about him but he had a brand-new Camaro and he must have been nineteen and he was, like, wow, really, really exciting.
His uncle owned a filling station, so he started working there and I started hanging out at the station because I had it in my mind that I was going to be the girl who got him. He was really cute, so I set out to see if I could get him to pay attention to me. He asked me out and then immediately my dad said, “No, this guy’s too old for you. What are you doing? He’s been out in life, you haven’t.” I said, “Well, I like him.” And I have a really rebellious spirit anyway, so that’s all my dad needed to say to set all this in motion.
I was bound and determined to go out with him. I don’t even remember when it was, but he decided that we should have sex, so I went to his apartment and we got undressed and got into bed and then I thought, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t do this.” I said, “No, I can’t do this.” But by then it was too late and he had sex with me. I don’t say that we had sex because I was really just frozen.
I had a lot of hickeys on my neck and my dad and mom grounded me and told me I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see anybody. I couldn’t go anywhere without one of my sisters or brother with me. I had to have rides to school and rides home from school. I couldn’t go anywhere.
But being the person that I am, I figured out a way around that because I babysat a lot. After the kids would go to bed and after they would get to sleep I’d just have him come over to wherever I was babysitting. I continued this relationship with him. At this point it wasn’t about him, and it wasn’t about love or anything; it was about showing my mom and dad that I was in control. I was going to be able to determine who I spent my time with and how I spent my time.
Along the way, I got pregnant. I was sixteen, and I knew that if my parents found out there would be big trouble, so I just ignored it—except that I was throwing up with morning sickness. We had to go outside every morning on the way to band and I’d throw up on the playground. I was, like, “Oh my God, what am I going to do? I’m pregnant.” I didn’t feel there was anybody I could tell, or anyone to talk to, but this guy.
So I told him and he started talking about it around town. And I mean this was a small town and news travels really fast. It wasn’t long before the school counselor called my parents in and said, “There’s a rumor going around that Margie is pregnant and I don’t know if it’s true or not but I think you should know.” That same day a couple of girls cornered me and said, “We hear you’re pregnant.” And I said, “How did you hear that?” “Well, your boyfriend is telling everybody, he’s telling the whole town.” I said, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Then my mom came into my room after school and she said, “The counselor called us in and said he’d heard a rumor that you’re pregnant. Is it true? Have you had a period?” And I just broke down and started crying and said, “Yeah, I think I am.”
My mother understood. My mother had known my dad six weeks and had gotten pregnant and they got married. She said, “I need to talk to Dad about it and we’ll decide what to do.” Obviously, I could not have a voice in the decision. I couldn’t make good decisions in their eyes, right? They decided that as soon as I started showing I would need to go to this home for unwed mothers in a city that was 250 miles away.
It was weird because the purpose of sending me there was to hide it, but everybody in town already knew. You can’t keep a secret like that in a town of twelve hundred, so I didn’t get why I had to go away. The only sense I could make of it was that I had done something so awful and so wrong that I needed to be sent away.
When I was about four months pregnant, they loaded me up in the car and drove me on the longest drive of my whole life to this home for unwed mothers. I remember crying all the way, looking out the window and just crying, and still not understanding why I had to go away—I just didn’t. They drove me out to this place. It was this old brick building that was three stories high—just what you envision as the stereotypical home for unwed mothers.
We went in there and all the social workers were so nice and oh, this poor little girl got pregnant; we’ll take care of her. There were a lot of eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-old women. There were some sort-of-tough women and then some of us really naïve girls who had no idea what was happening. There were very few young girls, but there was one other girl who came the same week that I did. She and I bonded. We were pretty much in the same boat and we
were about the same age, so we had a lot of talks and got really close.
I stayed in that place for months. My parents would come once a week, religiously. Every Sunday they would take me out. We’d go to the park and take a walk and go buy a soda or something to eat, and then they’d drop me back. Those visits were so painful. I mean, everybody just had to act like everything was okay and it was going to be over one of these days. My mother wrote me letters every single day that I was there. I’d get some mail every day when they did mail call.
I’ve just blocked a lot of it out. I mean, it was okay if you have to live somewhere, but it was kind of like being in prison. We couldn’t really go out on the grounds; you couldn’t go out of the place unless you had your parents with you. The older women could, but the younger ones couldn’t. All these months confined to this place. This other girl and I started walking the stairs—all the way up and all the way down. We thought if we exercised the babies would come faster, and at least this gave us something to do. We were bored. I mean, we all had to do the jobs. You’d have to be on the kitchen crew and cook the meals, you’d rotate jobs. Then we’d have groups on birth control and we’re like, you know, it’s a little late for that.
I just hoped that my baby would come before school started so I could go back to school in September for my senior year and act like nothing had happened, just like my parents wanted me to. Just go on with life and have it all be over. I mean, my parents had decided that I would give the baby up for adoption and there was never a door for talking about anything else. There was never any other option.
I couldn’t go back to school in September, I was still there. So that was really difficult, knowing that I was going to have to go back to school after it had already started. How was I going to deal with all the questions that I’d get? What would I say about where I’d been?
I delivered at the end of October and the very next morning a social worker shows up. It must have been the same day, because I delivered early in the morning, like 2:00 AM or something. The social worker comes and says, “Here, sign this paper.” She said, “You can have the choice—do you want to see your baby before you sign the paper or not?” I said no. I chose not to because it was going to be too painful. I asked her what the paper was and she said, “This signs him over to adoptive parents. It says you’ll never try to find him and you’ll give him his privacy.” So I signed it. I didn’t feel like I had any choice. She said, “Okay, it’s all done. Your parents will be here in a couple of days.”
I’ve dealt with that my entire life, trying to find my sense of power and voice. Because this whole experience was just totally taken away in so many ways. I don’t know what happened to my baby. I’ve always had to assume that he’s okay. I got the message from the social worker that this was all done. It’s all over and there’s nothing else to say about it.
It was just a couple of days later my parents came and picked me up and we went out to eat. I was trying to eat and I fainted, because it was way too early to be out doing anything. Then I went home and I had to go to school. My parents were, like, this has ended, there’s nothing else to say about it, nobody in town has to know. I mean, everybody knew but it was never, ever, ever talked about.
I just had this huge sense of shame and I went back to school and acted like nothing was wrong, nothing had happened. The spirit of the town was nobody ever said, “Where have you been? Why are you coming to school two months late?” But everybody knew. Friends that I had weren’t my friends anymore. Then all the boys wanted to go out with me because, “Oh yeah, she’s had sex—she’s loose, she’s a tramp, she’s a whore.” I ended up in some weird situations. I mean, one guy had a gun and tried to make me have sex with him. I guess I had shown that I would have sex, so boys decided they could take advantage of me. I guess they thought I didn’t have any sense.
I just was wanting to get my senior year over. I did a lot of crying but it was all private. I never talked about it with anybody. It was never mentioned in my family and I just went on like nothing happened. But deep down I was feeling all this shame and all this pain and loss and sadness. Really, really sad but ignoring it all, and just numbing. That’s when I really learned to dissociate from my feelings and just go about life and not feel.
I went away to college and started drinking. I found out that worked pretty good to numb the pain. I drank a lot in the first few years of college. I drank a lot and I had a lot of sex, trying to do something with all these feelings. None of it really worked but I kept with that game plan. And all the time I was wondering what happened to this baby. You know, just feeling this big, big sense of loss, and crying a lot. I would get drunk and cry, get drunk and cry. In the dorm, people would say, “Why are you so sad all the time?”
I was finishing up my degree and then I met the guy who’s now my husband. Our early years were not good. He was messed up, too. It took me a lot of years. I lived with that pain and loss and it was never really expressed. A few years ago, I went to therapy and this was what came out: giving up that baby. Along the way I kept thinking, “I’m really, really sad. I need to go to therapy,” I mean, I didn’t realize that’s what it all was about, that deep sense of pain. But when I sat down with the therapist and started talking, this was where I was stuck. I had just lived in that grief for thirty-some years.
It’s still not talked about in my family, still not mentioned. If I bring it up, people will say, “Oh, that was so long ago, why are you thinking about it now?” I mean there have been a lot of times over the years when I’ve thought I need to find him, make sure that he’s okay. Every fall, every October, I get really, really sad.
I just felt wrong most of my life. I mean, I got a doctorate degree to try to make myself better, to try to prove to myself that I’m okay, and I still didn’t feel okay. It’s affected my self-confidence, my ability to be intimate with people and let myself be close to other people. I just couldn’t have long-term friends or friends who were close because I was afraid that they’d be taken away, or that they’d leave and I’d feel all that pain again. I’ve lived most of my adult life disassociated from my feelings, just numb, in order to exist.
It’s had a profound impact on my relationships with other people, big-time trust issues. I mean, that’s one reason I couldn’t get to therapy—I didn’t think I could trust the therapist. Then, living with the secret. That’s another thing that kept me away from intimacy. I’ve had a secret. It’s been a secret my entire life and there have been very few people I’ve talked to about it. Having a child out of wedlock at that time was just not an okay thing to do. You were not an okay person if you did that. And that’s fueled my feelings of low self-esteem, low self-confidence.
If I could have stayed home and had the baby and it had all been out in the open, or just had a choice of whether or not I wanted to surrender this baby.…I don’t know what choice I would have made. I was living in my parents’ house, I didn’t have a job, so it would have taken some cooperation on their part. But, you know, I’ve seen students of mine who’ve done that and they’ve done okay. Things have worked out.
YVONNE
I was eighteen years old. I was working and trying to make enough money to go to college. None of my family members had gone, just a couple of aunts who had gone to nursing school. My dad is the child of German immigrants and he had to drop out of school in sixth grade when his father died to work and support his mother and younger brother. So his idea of accomplishment was getting all his kids through high school. When I said I wanted to go to college, he said, “I’m not spending money on that.” I wanted to study art, which he also thought was perfectly useless.
I think I was a normal eighteen-year-old. I mean, I liked to goof off and have fun. When I met my son’s father he said it was love at first sight, but he was a hopeless romantic. I was still a virgin. What I thought was making out turned into sex and that was my first experience. I was shocked and horrified and was sobbing my brains out. So we had sex, and
then we didn’t have sex again until about two weeks later. Because of my good Catholic background, I was feeling like we had to be married before we did that again. He moved into my apartment with me. I would go to work every day and he would be there with supper when I came home. We did do it again and the next day at work I just knew I was pregnant and I knew I was having a son. I just had this premonition.
I panicked. When I told him, he got all excited: “Oh, I’m going to be a dad.” He could teach his little boy how to play the guitar and take him horseback riding and fishing. So, yes, we were going to get married. He came up with this plan. His grandparents had a resort in northern Wisconsin, so we were going to move up there and live. I was going to get a job. He was in a band with some rather strange people, and he was going to get, whatever they call them, gigs.
So I did my part. I moved back to a small town in Wisconsin where my parents lived to work and save money. I worked the night shift in a battery factory. And he moved up there with his band and a herd of other guys. Some of them I thought were really old guys, they were, you know, twenty-four. His friends convinced him to tell me to sleep with other guys so he could say that I didn’t know who the father was. So here’s somebody who had professed he loved me, and he tells me this. He didn’t have to tell me twice. It was, like, “If you don’t want me, I don’t want you.”
I had to resort to telling my parents. My dad freaked out and he loaded my brother in the car with me in the backseat. “We’re going to go find that miserable son of a bitch and I’m gonna castrate him.” Which, gee, I didn’t really want my dad to do anything but help me raise the baby—somehow just make sure I could do this. Well, we found him and my dad took one look at this long-haired guitar player, which was his worst nightmare, and told him what he thought, which was “If you don’t get a real job and a haircut you’re never going to see my daughter again.” Then he picked him up by the collar, threw him across the room into the refrigerator, and dented it with his head. We got back in the car and left and I didn’t see my boyfriend again.
