The Past Is a Foreign Country

According to a quote in THE GO-BETWEEN, a 1953 novel by British author L. P. Hartley (whom I confess I hadn't heard of otherwise), “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

I was recently struck by the realization that this memorable aphorism can apply even to the past in one's own lifetime, when I read THE GIRLS WHO WENT AWAY (2006), by Ann Fessler. I bought this history of homes for unwed mothers that flourished from the 1940s to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision because it's one of the principal sources used by Grady Hendrix in his WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYWARD GIRLS. This novel, set in such an institution in 1970, is one of the best -- and most emotionally harrowing -- horror stories I've read in a long time.

Hard as it is for me to imagine, for our younger grandchildren 1970 lies further in the past than World War II did for me at their age. My teen years -- the 1960s -- are ancient history to their generation! One thing that hit me while reading the reminiscences of unwed mothers who gave up their babies for adoption in the pre-Roe era was how strange the customs and taboos of that period seem to me now, even though I remember living through it.

Delving into Fessler’s meticulously researched work immediately after Hendrix’s novel reveals how much factual material he drew upon. Each chapter of THE GIRLS WHO WENT AWAY alternates historical and sociological background information by the author with retrospective first-person narratives by women who “went away” to homes for unwed mothers –- run by the National Florence Crittenton Mission and the Roman Catholic Church, among other institutions –- and surrendered their babies for adoption. In the framing introduction and conclusion, Fessler lends a further personal touch to the topic with her perspective on her own experience as an adoptee from that period. I was surprised to learn that originally most institutions for single, pregnant girls and women focused on giving them resources and skills to rear their children themselves. A radical shift occurred during the 1940s, after which residents of homes for unwed mothers were automatically expected to give up their newborns for adoption. Interestingly, Black families and communities, rather than routinely sending pregnant girls to “homes,” more often provided support to help young mothers keep their infants. In the post-World-War II institutions, the inmates were shamed, assumed to be neurotic and/or sexually promiscuous. Little or nothing, of course, was said to condemn the boys and men co-responsible for the pregnancies.

The girls typically lived under strict regimens and received little or no instruction on what to expect from the process of childbirth. They were routinely lied to, told they wouldn't suffer or remember much of anything because they would be unconscious the whole time. After delivery, they were rushed into relinquishing custody of their infants, signing documents they didn't understand and sometimes weren't allowed to read. Some of the young women eventually went on to marry the fathers of their children. Most, at least in Fessler’s sample population, did not. A few, interviewed decades later, reported their stays in the “homes” as positive experiences and were in fact glad to surrender their babies to married couples, who could give children stable families, and move on with their lives. Most, however, did not feel that way. The loss of their babies, often perceived as forced upon them, resulted in lifelong trauma, even if hidden. Often their “shameful” past was concealed from the children they later bore within marriage and sometimes even from their husbands.

Although I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, I still find it hard to wrap my head around the lengths to which families went to conceal their daughters’ “disgrace.” From a contemporary perspective, I can’t help looking back and thinking, “Good grief, why on Earth did they care?” Granted, for an unmarried teenager, dealing with pregnancy and motherhood would have been (as it still is) a terribly difficult plight. But to act as if having it revealed would practically be a fate worse than death? "Foreign," indeed!

margaret L. Carter

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