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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780143038979 |
Review-a-Day (What is Review-a-Day?)
"Through hundreds of interviews with women who gave up babies for adoption between 1945 and 1973, The Girls Who Went Away provides a revelatory account of the fifties, illuminating it as an anomalous period beset by social contradictions. It airs a secret that still shapes our society, and it provides a window into what it would mean if the social agenda of the Christian right were to prevail." Carolyn McConnell, The Iowa Review (read the entire review from the Iowa Review)
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
In this deeply moving work, Ann Fessler brings to light the lives of hundreds of thousands of young single American women forced to give up their newborn children in the years following World War II and before Roe v. Wade. The Girls Who Went Away tells a story not of wild and carefree sexual liberation, but rather of a devastating double standard that has had punishing long-term effects on these women and on the children they gave up for adoption. Based on Fessler's groundbreaking interviews, it brings to brilliant life these women's voices and the spirit of the time, allowing each to share her own experience in gripping and intimate detail. Today, when the future of the Roe decision and women's reproductive rights stand squarely at the front of a divisive national debate, Fessler brings to the fore a long-overlooked history of single women in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies.
In 2002, Fessler, an adoptee herself, traveled the country interviewing women willing to speak publicly about why they relinquished their children. Researching archival records and the political and social climate of the time, she uncovered a story of three decades of women who, under enormous social and family pressure, were coerced or outright forced to give their babies up for adoption. Fessler deftly describes the impossible position in which these women found themselves: as a sexual revolution heated up in the postwar years, birth control was tightly restricted, and abortion proved prohibitively expensive or life endangering. At the same time, a postwar economic boom brought millions of American families into the middle class, exerting its own pressures to conform to a model of family perfection. Caught in the middle, single pregnant women were shunned by family and friends, evicted from schools, sent away to maternity homes to have their children alone, and often treated with cold contempt by doctors, nurses, and clergy.
The majority of the women Fessler interviewed have never spoken of their experiences, and most have been haunted by grief and shame their entire adult lives. A searing and important look into a long-overlooked social history, The Girls Who Went Away is their story.
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About the Author
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Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
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Dina, April 12, 2008 (view all comments by Dina)
This is an extremely interesting book. It's a little hard to imagine how different things were before 1970, but this book describes the lives of young women who became pregnant and then "disappeared" into maternity homes. For the most part, they had no idea about labor or childbirth and ultimately were left at the hospital to labor alone and then aggressively pushed to sign papers to give up their babies. From the perspective of a mother who had her children in the 90s, it's unbelievable what these women went through.
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CATANDABOWL, February 18, 2008 (view all comments by CATANDABOWL)
Excellent subject. This matter should certainly be brought to the attention of all people. My view of adoption comes from a different perspective - as an adoptive mother. While there are many thousands already involved in adoption, there are many more who know nothing of the personal aspect. I feel very strongly that adoption is tossed around as an easy and praise-worthy conclusion to a complex situation. Not many understand the role of adoptive parents. This is never a secret mission and the truth never goes away. I love that Ann Fessler wrote the book and I will own and keep a copy.
Ruby
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Gaye, February 17, 2008 (view all comments by Gaye)
Many of us who are concerned about current efforts to overturn Roe v Wade talk about the bad old days of back alley abortionists and coathangers. The Girls Who Went Away are frequently forgotten. This sound like an excellent book on a subject that needs to be discussed. I knew girls who "went away" and suffered throughout their lives over the child they gave up. I believe these stories are going to remind us all of someone we knew.
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Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780143038979
- Subtitle:
- The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Penguin Books
- Subject:
- Adoption
- Subject:
- Women's Studies - History
- Subject:
- Women's Studies
- Publication Date:
- July 2007
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 362
- Dimensions:
- 8.42x5.58x.80 in. .73 lbs.
