by Ann Fessler
—Diane II
One of the sentiments that was expressed by many of the women I interviewed was that their mothers felt betrayed by them, and that sense of betrayal seems to have fueled the intensity of the disgust and anger that so many parents, especially mothers, inflicted on their daughters.
In all those months I was sent away, my mother did not visit me. My father would drive an hour and take me out for the afternoon. We went for ice cream, we went for walks. He never looked at my belly and we never talked about it at all. I don’t know what we talked about, but he was there for me.
—Sheryl
My mother was horrified. She called me a slut, a whore. “No wonder he followed you around like a dog in heat all the time.” My dad looked at me and said, “Have you been with a man?,” which was the terminology of the day. I could only nod my head: yes, daddy’s little girl had been with a man. That was hard.
And it seemed like just a day or so after that, my mother came in and had me go to the bathroom, disrobe, and get into the bathtub, which was very humiliating in itself. She administered a douche, which was very painful. I didn’t know anything about a douche. I found out later that what she had used was Lysol from the brown bottle, and I blocked that out of my mind for twenty-something years. One day my husband was cleaning and I smelled the Lysol and it took me back.
—Pollie
The rise in social status for so many families after the war and the concomitant pressures on these families to conform to middle-class standards were unprecedented. By the mid-1950s, almost 60 percent of the population enjoyed a middle-class income, as compared with 31 percent in the years before the Great Depression.3 Government-guaranteed loans had allowed returning veterans to purchase single-family homes by financing up to 90 percent of their mortgage at low interest rates.4 In 1947 alone, 800,000 GI’s received home loans.5 The difficulty was building homes fast enough to meet the demand. For sixteen consecutive years, from 1929 to 1945, new construction had not kept pace with the need for housing, and as GI’s returned from the war and married, the demand intensified.6 Private developers were poised to meet this need with assistance from the government. Developers received tax incentives and government guarantees that allowed them to build enormous suburban developments like Levittown, the Long Island community of seventeen thousand homes built by Levitt and Sons between 1947 and 1951.7 Before the war about one third of homes had been built by their owners and another third by small contractors who built a handful of homes every year. But by the late 1950s two thirds of all houses built in the United States were erected by big builders who primarily created uniform suburban developments that were monotonous but affordable.8 Mortgages on these new suburban homes often cost less per month than the cost of renting an apartment.9 Housing starts went from 114,000 in 1944 to 1,692,000 in 1950.10 Whereas only 40 percent of families had owned their own homes at the end of World War II, 60 percent were homeowners by 1960. Between 1950 and 1960, 18 million people moved to the suburbs.11 All of these new homes needed furniture, appliances, a television, and often two cars, and all of that purchasing furthered the economic boom. Americans bought 20 million refrigerators, 11.6 million televisions, and 21.4 million cars in the four years that followed the end of the war.12
The percentage of the population that conformed to the postwar model of the perfect nuclear family was also far greater at this time than at any time in history. During the 1950s and 1960s, the percentage of the population that was married rose considerably and was higher by about 10 percent than it was before or has been since. In census reports from 1900 to 1940, the percentage of the population that was married moved up or down in relatively small increments and averaged about 58 percent. But in 1950 the figure rose to 66 percent and then climbed to 68 percent in 1960. After 1970, this percentage started to return to prewar levels and in 1980 the percentage of the population that was married was the same as in 1900: 54 percent.13 In the U.S. Census for 2000, the percentage was also 54 percent.14
After the war the average age at which couples married also dropped. The median age at first marriage in the 1980s was the same as in 1890, roughly age 22 for women and 26 for men. However, between 1945 and 1960 the median age of marriage dropped to an average of 20.5 for women and 22.75 for men.15 By 1950, almost 60 percent of women between 18 and 24 years of age were married.16 Most couples had completed their families before they reached age 30, and they also had more children than in previous decades. Women who reached adulthood in the 1930s had an average of 2.4 children, whereas those who did so in the 1950s had 3.2 children.17 The sum total of these changes added up to the baby boom, which by definition includes those born between 1946 and 1964. Even though marriage and child-rearing norms of the time came to be seen as characteristic of traditional American family life, in fact they were abnormal in comparison with marriage and childbearing patterns throughout the twentieth century.18
Writers and sociologists of the time began to identify a major shift in the American psyche. Sociologist David Riesman in his 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd, identified a transformation in social character—away from the “inner-directed” individualism that had been valued in the nineteenth century to “other-directedness”—and a shift from production to consumption.19 William Whyte argued in his 1956 bestseller, The Organization Man, that white-collar men increasingly subordinated their independence and personal goals to conform to corporate demands so that they would belong to a group and fit in.20 Both of these men argued that the suburbs were an extension of corporate life and that people willingly accepted their life of conformity as part of a package that included the creature comforts they now possessed.21 It may well have been impossible for families to step out of line if they wanted to hold on to what they had. Between 1952 and 1956, although disposable income increased 21 percent, borrowing had increased 55 percent, and by the end of the 1950s almost half of families were deeply in debt and had less than two hundred dollars in liquid assets.22
You have no idea what things were like in the sixties. Everything depended on your social status and what everybody said about you. And if this befell you, you just got axed totally to the bottom of the pit somewhere, at least in my mother’s eyes, and she had worked so hard to build up our status. I mean, it was just a sham. You have this perfect façade—one boy, one girl, achieve in school and all this kind of stuff. But meanwhile at home I’d go to my room to avoid shouting matches. I mean, basically the communication style in our family was to shout at each other. Yet we’re the perfect family, right? I don’t know, these are the ironies of the sixties.
I know there was no sympathy for me whatsoever. I think I did tell them that I was raped, although we didn’t have the actual term “date rape” in that day. But it was still all about how I disgraced her. That’s what it was all about.
—Ann
Those who were living the middle-class American dream in suburbia were geographically removed from those who had not benefited from the postwar boom. A prominent feature of the economy of this time was how disproportionately the benefits accrued to white families while economic prosperity lagged behind for African Americans. While millions of white families in the 1950s were purchasing new homes that were affordable because of government-backed developments and home loans, many African American families were being discriminated against through redlining policies that prevented them from moving into these new neighborhoods. William Levitt’s contracts, for example, stipulated that residents must be Caucasian,23 and Levitt was far from alone in preventing African Americans from moving into better neighborhoods. Even many returning African American GI’s were excluded from securing loans for homes in desirable areas, and thus from building the home equity that contributed so significantly to the longer-term wealth and financial security of their white counterparts as real estate increased in value over the years.
One of the overriding characteristics of the social change during this period was, in fact, “white flight” from urban communities and m
ultiethnic neighborhoods into the suburbs. Whyte referred to the suburbs as the new melting pot, because it was during this time that many white ethnic groups, such as Italian Americans, German Americans, Irish Americans, and American Jews began to be thought of as simply white.24
The lack of opportunity for many African Americans to join the expanding middle class may have played some role in the huge discrepancy between the numbers of children surrendered for adoption during these years by white women versus African American women. Between 1952 and 1972, whites surrendered at an average of ten times the rate of African Americans.25 But the relationship between social status and surrender is only part of the picture. The maternity-home system, which expanded tremendously after the war to provide a place for girls to live out their pregnancies, primarily served a white clientele. Immediately after the war, many maternity homes had the same segregationist policies that were evident in other institutions of the time. In addition, those who were poor, both blacks and whites, may have been less able to travel to maternity homes in distant cities or to pay the fees that they required. Perhaps some rural and urban poor did not even known about the homes or were not referred to them as readily by doctors or social-service agencies. A Florence Crittenton Bulletin from 1952 reported that about a third of the forty-nine maternity homes at that time provided services for African American girls and three were “solely for Negro girls.”26 However, some of these homes were not the large maternity homes that white girls were sent to but boarding homes that were “under the supervision of Florence Crittenton staff” and could take in only a few girls at a time.27 One of the women I interviewed was sent to such a home.
My parents found out I was pregnant and then there was talk about me not having the baby. I said to them, “I won’t submit to an abortion—I plan on having my baby.” They decided that they were going to send me away, which was a big, big shock because I was so involved at school. I just loved being in the high-school band and my grades were important to me. But they did take me away. They called it a home for unwed mothers, but it was more like a foster home. They had foster children there and then they had one other young lady who came in after I did who was pregnant. The parents in the home were very nice people, but they were elderly people. It was a black home, of course. During that time—this was 1963—everything was pretty much segregated here. My high school was all black. It was just prior to the schools integrating.
I grew up from very early childhood until about age fifteen in a housing project, and while in today’s time when you think of a housing project you think of abject poverty, single parents, slumlike dwellings, there was none of that. When I grew up in the projects, we knew maybe two families where there was not a mother and a father in the home. You had two parents, you had working parents, and it was expected of you to finish high school and go to college. Being black, most of the people I knew went to college and became teachers.
To be a single, unwed mother was just something you didn’t do. I knew two other young ladies who got pregnant when we were in high school. It was just something you didn’t do. You were an outcast, so there wasn’t a lot of help for you.
I think the main issue was shame, behaving outside the acceptable norms and bringing shame upon the family. I don’t think women were perceived as being capable of raising children without the financial support of a male. But I can think of quite a number of extended families around where couples moved in with the grandmother and they all lived together and pooled resources. But single parenting I didn’t see. I don’t think it was looked upon too favorably.
Incidentally, my ex-husband is an adoptee. His mom was married to his father when he was born, but his father was abusive and he told her if she kept the baby he was leaving. So my husband was raised by a woman who knew his mom and said, “I’ll raise your baby.” He grew up with an adoptive mom, but he knew who his mother was. My children enjoyed a beautiful relationship with both women, both the natural and adoptive grandmothers. The secrecy and the lies weren’t there.
—Carole II
One concern that was not raised directly by the African American women I interviewed, but was talked about by white women who gave birth to biracial babies in the 1960s, was the fear that adoption agencies would not be able to find a home for their baby and the child might end up languishing in the foster-care system. In fact, race is a factor in the placement of babies for adoption even today. Despite the high demand for adoptable babies in this country, and a 140 percent increase since 1995 in the number of foreign-born children adopted by Americans to meet this demand, some African American babies are sent to foreign countries to be adopted by couples in Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and England.28
During the 1950s and 1960s there was a great deal of turmoil for both white and African American families when a daughter was discovered to be pregnant. But unlike many middle-class white families of the time, fewer African American families disowned their daughters or insisted that they surrender. In the majority of cases, the baby was absorbed into the extended family or adopted informally. The reasons for this difference are complex and reflect the disparity between the experiences, and the social, cultural, and economic histories, of black versus white Americans. 29 Interestingly, today white surrender rates have dropped to match those of African American women, which have remained fairly constant over the years—at approximately 1.5 percent of premarital births. It is worth noting that the majority of the women I interviewed gave birth in the 1960s, when the white surrender rate was extremely high. In 1964, the percentage of white surrenders was about 40 percent,30 almost twenty-seven times the rate for African Americans.
The stories of women that appear in this book reflect the difference in black and white surrender rates in that the vast majority of the women I interviewed are white and most were raised in blue-collar or white-collar middle-class homes. Only a small percentage described their families as either poor or affluent. A common belief at the time was that girls from affluent homes routinely obtained abortions out of the country or through doctors in their communities who charged a hefty sum. Those who desired and could afford an illegal abortion could often find one. It is estimated that between 250,000 and one million illegal abortions took place each year in the postwar years. These “back room” abortions were often highly dangerous and were responsible for 40 percent of all maternal deaths.31 Some women who might have been able to afford these illegal procedures chose not to get such abortions because of that danger.
Another factor that intensified the pressure on individuals and families to conform after the war was the escalating fear of communism. This climate of fear and suspicion led to both legitimate inquiry and reckless persecution of people who were suspected of being Communist sympathizers. Many civil servants, actors, and writers lost their livelihood for holding views that were left of center.32 The fear of internal subversive forces fueled an obsession with nonmarital sexual behavior and efforts to identify individuals thought to be sexual perverts who had infiltrated our government and were considered to be “as dangerous as actual communists.”33 Anyone with a sordid past or believed to be involved in unsanctioned sexual behavior was suspect. In the climate of cold war paranoia, “loose” women and homosexuals were especially suspect and thought to pose security risks since they were presumed to be weak by nature and therefore susceptible to blackmail.34
Women who did not subscribe to the prevailing domestic model were seen as a threat both to the family and to society. It was not at all uncommon for women perceived as loose to be seen as the responsible party when it came to a whole host of problems that required a male counterpart. During the war, loose women were blamed for spreading venereal disease. The government warned soldiers against seductive women who might be spies in disguise and against “good girls” whose morals had loosened due to wartime independence, and who threatened happy homes by luring men away from their wives and children.35
The nuclear family—typified by a
male breadwinner and a wife who stayed home and devoted herself to the needs of her husband and children—was held up not only as the ideal but also as a patriotic endeavor.36 Men and women who did not conform to this model “risked being perceived as perverted, immoral, unpatriotic, and pathological.”37 The belief being espoused was that the strength of our country depended on manly men whose lives were typified by marriage and procreation, and on womanly women who did not compete with men or otherwise emasculate them. This ideal woman was subservient, domestic, and sought fulfillment through her role as wife and mother to the next generation of children who would continue to fight the “Red Menace.” The consensus was that happiness for both men and women depended on marriage. A survey from that time indicated that only 9 percent of those polled believed that a single person could be happy.38
After the war, women vacated, or were pushed out of, the high-paying jobs they had held and into low-paying or part-time jobs to make way for returning veterans. With the expanding economy, it was feasible for more men to earn a decent living, and a wife working outside the home came to be looked upon as evidence of a man’s inability to support his family. Nevertheless, the number of working wives doubled between 1940 and 1960, and as consumption rose many families depended on mom’s part-time income to meet the monthly bills and allow them to retain their middle-class lifestyle.39 Despite the fact that many wives were working, their primary responsibility was taking care of the home and raising the children. Women who could not find fulfillment in canning, housework, and changing diapers were seen as neurotic.40 Since child rearing was the mother’s primary responsibility, it was also her fault if the children did not turn out right. Having a daughter who was pregnant was unequivocal proof of her failure and the family’s social standing in the community could instantly plummet since it was commonly accepted that only bad or low-class families were plagued with such problems.
