I’ve always wanted to adopt children, in addition to having my own biological ones, and I’ve always been aware of the… shall we say ‘unethical’ side of adoption?

Even knowing that, this book was a real eye opener on just HOW unethical adoption got it’s start. It dispels the myths of “unwanted” children, so much so that every time I hear some pompous do-gooder talking about all the poor unwanted babies out there… well, it makes me angry and sick. Doesn’t any one ever wonder WHY there are so many so-called “unwanted” children?

The stories in Ann Fessler’s non-fiction book on forced adoptions in the United States between 1945 and 1973 are in the very own words of the mother’s who never got to keep their babies. Some never even got to see their child, but all were never given the option of keeping their son or daughter. “Sit down, shut up, do as we say. Haven’t you caused enough trouble? You’ll get over it,” was what they were told. They were ‘sent away’ to maternity homes where they were kept until they gave birth. Many suffered awful abuses at the hands of the doctors, the nurses, the maternity home staff, and even their parents. For example, the girl who was thrown across the kitchen by her father when she told her parents she was pregnant, the mother who made her daughter strip naked in the tub before her and then douche with Lysol!, and the taunting of the nurses and doctors, “I bet you’d really like to see your baby, wouldn’t you. I bet you’d like to touch him. Well, you can’t, you whore.”

For those who did challenge the system, they were told that they would have to pay back thousands and thousands of dollars for the “care” they received at the maternity homes and the hospital stay, and even the foster care for their child – with interest. When one girl refused to sign the paperwork to sign her baby over, her parents put her into a mental institution for a year before she finally broke and signed.

So much shame these young mothers carried around, many going on to marry and have other children, and most never telling anyone about what they had gone through. So much shame, guilt and upset, and the underlying reason for it? “What would the neighbors think?” was the main excuse given by parents as they drove their daughters to maternity homes where they dumped them until they gave birth.

The stories are all unique and differing, but they all have one very important thing in common. Not one of these girls wanted – ever, not even for a second – to give up their children.

The saddest part is how very much history hasn’t changed. To be sure, an “unwed mother” is not nearly the same “shameful” thing that it was during those years! But even now, the “unwanted” children are not unwanted by their mothers, but rather by society.

Ann Fessler herself was also an adoptee, and includes her own story at the end of the book. Throughout every chapter is statistics and information on every aspect of adoption; birth mothers, adoption before WWII, adoption AFTER WWII, adoptees, birth fathers, subsequent children, PTSD…

This was a great read, even though many parts were very upsetting, not just out of human empathy, but as a mother myself.