Why did my mother keep me a secret?

Jane

“My mother kept me a secret; she betrayed me; she dishonored me with her silence,” cried an adoptee who found her mother in her 30’s .

The truth is that we mothers betrayed ourselves as well as our children.

Lorraine and I gave up our infant daughters in 1966. We and the other single mothers at that time were programmed by our families, religious authorities, social workers, advice columnists--indeed the entire culture, through and through--to try to forget and go one with our lives, to pretend our children did not exist. The message was crystal clear: Spare yourself and your family the SHAME that you had sex out of wedlock, SHAME that you opened up your body to a man who did not respect you (and in my case ignored the signs of his flawed character), SHAME that you were dumb enough not to take precautions or demand that he did.

There are a few mothers like Lorraine who did step forward--in a big way with the publication of her controversial memoir Birthmark in 1979--while secrecy was still very much a part of the adoption experience. She was roundly criticized and attacked in print, on television, to her face and behind her back. For those like myself who did not speak out then, I offer only reasons, not excuses.

In mid-century America, pretense colored everything. “Does she or doesn’t she” asked the Miss Clairol ad and only her hairdresser knew for sure if the model in the ad did the racy thing of coloring her hair, with a wink to the sexual question implied in the ad.

ACTING AS IF THE CHILD NOT ADOPTED

Adoption agencies tried to match babies with their adoptive parents in coloring and heritage if possible so the children were "as if" born to them, keeping their adoptive status and their adoptive parents’ infertility a secret from everyone but close friends and  family members. Many didn't tell their kids they were adopted. Some times couples even moved to a new neighborhood so they could act as if the child was born to them, not adopted, and no one would ask questions or know the truth.

When actress Loretta Young became pregnant in 1935 from a brief affair with Clark Gable, she split town, gave birth in secret, and left her baby daughter with caretakers. When the baby was 19 months old, she brought the baby home and announced she had adopted her. The public went along with this fiction.

Those who broke the rules openly paid a price. Actress Ingrid Berman was denounced on the floor of the US Senate and hounded out of the country with negative press in 1950--after she became pregnant by director Roberto Rossellini when they were both married to others. After their son, Renato, was born, they married and had twin daughters, one of whom is the actress and philanthropist, Isabella Rossellini; the other Isotta, a professor of Italian literature.  

Movies from the Forties and Fifties, such as the tearjerkers To Each His Own and Three Secrets, reinforced the message, unwed pregnancies were to be kept secret at all costs. If not the movies took the tone of Born to Be Bad, (1934). In it Loretta Young is a high-class call girl with a seven-year-old son. The back story is that she was on the streets at fifteen, pregnant and unmarried. Now Young is determined that her child not grow up to be taken advantage of, and she is teaching him shady street smarts. There's almost a chance at love with childless Cary Grant, a rich but already married man with a big house in the burbs. But in the end Young "does the right thing," allowing her son to stay with the Grant and his wife, who have a pool and a pony, and have taught the boy in the few months he lived with them better values than she had, or would. Young goes back, presumably, to her dissolute life.

SEX WAS TABOO ON SCREEN
Sit coms featuring married couples shied away from the idea that they might actually be doing it: Bedrooms had twin beds. Ozzie and Harriet, a sitcom staple of Fifties television, slept in twin beds. My older sister, a drama major, explained to me when I was a teenager how to tell if a movie storyline included sex: if a scene closed while a couple was kissing, it meant they went all the way. Today, couples have sex on screen; in the recent film, Savages, the lead female character has sex with two different men in the space of a few minutes before the opening credits. Today women give their out of wedlock babies to genetic strangers while TV cameras are rolling, or brag about it on their blogs.

It wasn’t just sexual behavior but anything remotely connected with body parts that was hushed up in polite society. First Lady Betty Ford bravely broke new ground in 1974 when she discussed her breast cancer and mastectomy publicly. Misguided modesty kept many mothers from breastfeeding. Those who did breastfeed were shunted off to backrooms or closets.

Many mothers in the past were afraid of their husband's reaction once they learned of their indiscretions. After all, one of the reasons for giving up a baby was because no decent man would marry you if they knew about your bastard. It was a very big deal for both me and Lorraine to tell our husbands that we had had a child, and given her up for adoption.

Besides the shame factor, mothers of my generation feared how the knowledge of their lost child would affect the children they raised. Would they fear being given away? Would they be ashamed if their classmates found out? What would they think about their mother having sex with someone other than their father? Would they be anxious that this missing sibling might show up one day, or perhaps was perhaps lurking in the neighborhood?

Since my reunion with my daughter Rebecca in 1997, I have met mothers who did tell their other children about their lost child, often when the mothers began searching for that child. I have to admit I was surprised when these mothers told me that their children took it well; often the only grumblings were about no longer being the oldest child in the family. Frequently, the response was “let’s go find our brother or sister.”*

EVEN 'UNFIT' FOR RESPECTABLE EMPLOYMENT
We worried how disclosing our past would affect our careers. When I told my three raised daughters about my lost daughter Rebecca, my middle daughter, aware of my interest in politics said, "Oh, so that's why you never considered running for political office." She was absolutely right. I was afraid that having given up a daughter would be discovered and I would be disgraced as "unfit" for office. If it were known that a woman had relinquished a child, she would have not been able to hold a job such as a teacher, who are supposed to be role models.

Lorraine was so terrified her new bosses at a newspaper would find out what had happened at her last job--she had to quit because she got pregnant!--that she lied to a doctor during a routine physical exam for health insurance. If she told the truth--yes, she had been pregnant, yes, she had given birth--would she be a hiring risk? Might she be let go during the initial trial period before union rules demanded she be fired for cause? Would having an affair at her last job be "good cause?" That is what haunted her in 1966, at a supposedly loosey-goosey place such as a newspaper where lots of people were having affairs, just not getting caught. 

In 1952, eighteen-year-old Jeanette, one of the first mothers featured in Ann Fessler's The Girls Who Went Away, sought a job with General Electric at the Hanford Project in eastern Washington which extracted radio-active plutonium, necessary to make atomic bombs. On her application she said she had never lived out of the area. About four months afters after landing her low level job, her supervisor told her to go to the nearby office of the Atomic Energy Commission. There an officious young man accused her of lying on her application, "'You went to San Francisco for five months and had a baby, didn't you?'' Sobbing, she confessed. The young man continued: "'Have you ever considered that if the Communists found that out, in order for you to keep your secret you would have to give them secrets about your job?'" Apparently satisfied that the Communists would not be able to blackmail Jeanette, she was allowed to keep her job. She soon left to attend college.

CLEVER WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT CHILDREN
Like many mothers, I never felt right about denying my lost child altogether, although I did not think that acknowledging her would matter to her since, as adoptees, advice columnists, and others often reminded us, her adoptive parents were her real parents. I hardly counted. Yet when people asked me how many children I had, I responded with “my husband and I have three daughters.” Factually, this was true since my lost child was not my husband’s daughter. Until she went public, it was assumed Lorraine had no children, and when directly asked if she did said, no. After all, she wasn't raising her, now was she? But of course she was anxious whenever asked the question and immediately changed the subject.

Former CUB president Karen Vedder, who had given up a daughter but raised four sons, told me she responded with “I have four sons.” That almost always brought the heart-wrenching response, “what a shame you never had a daughter.” Women like Lorraine who are assumed to be childless, or have no other children have no way to be clever abut their answers, but I don’t think that I have ever met a first mother who had other children who hadn’t come up with a clever way to answer the “Do you have any children?” or "How many children do you have?” question with an answer which neither admitted to nor denied the lost one.

Mothers in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties for the most part were isolated. While groups like Adoptees’ Liberty Movement Association (ALMA), Concerned United Birthparents (CUB), and the American Adoption Congress (AAC) promoted searching and gave first mothers the opportunity to share their experiences, few first mothers knew of them until access to the Internet became common. Although I had known many couples who had “formed their family through adoption,” I didn’t know a single first mother. Or so I thought. Once I came out of the closet, I learned that several of my friends and acquaintances had given up children.

Even though the entertainment industry has turned unwed pregnancy into a money-making enterprise with programs like 16 and Pregnant and I’m Having Their Baby, and the dreadful movie, Juno, silence and secrecy are still with us. Prominent organizations still claim that first mothers have a moral, if not a constitutional, right to hide their shame. The powerful lobby organization, The National Council for Adoption, and its member agencies including LDS Family Services, Bethany Christian Services, and Gladney Center for Adoptions, as well as the New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union all have lobbied aggressively against unsealing birth certificates which might allow adoptees to find their biological  families.

THE TRUTH SHALL SET YE FREE
Legislators who vote down bills to unseal original birth records agree in great enough numbers that moving bills to unseal birth records to passage is proving to be extremely difficult. To date, only seven states allow adoptees the absolute right to obtain a copy of their original birth certificates. Rhode Island was the last to join that group when it opened its records in July. In New Jersey, where a bill with a noxious birth parent-contact veto passed the legislature, Gov. Chris Christie, the keynote speaker at the Republican convention this week, refused to sign it. By doing nothing--except releasing a preachy press release--Christie single handedly killed reform in New Jersey.

We at FMF encourage those mothers still burdened by secrecy to step forward and begin by telling their families. Mothers in hiding, mothers who have not spoken of this to their families since the birth, are a huge stumbling block to changing hearts and minds. We know of legislators with sisters who have never spoken of their relinquished children, and thus the legislators feel the need to "protect" their kin from being outed, and found, and thus say they will never vote to unseal the birth records.

To those who are still keeping this secret we say: We know telling someone about having relinquished a child is not easy, particularly if you have been keeping it a secret for years, decades, but once done, you will feel as if the heavy weight on your soul has lifted. The truth shall set you free.

___________________________

*Carol Schaefer described telling her two raised sons, Brett, twelve, and Kip, nine, about their older, relinquished brother, Phillip, in her 1991 memoir, The Other Mother: A True Story:

“It was obvious from [Brett’s] expression that his first reaction was shock. And then he looked at me and said, ‘Mom, that must have been so awful for you.’

‘I looked over at Kip, whose eyes were wide, and watched as the news sank in. I knew as I saw the love and compassion on their faces that this was my finest, most thrilling and rewarding moment as a mother. Nothing would ever make me so proud as their spontaneous reaction just had. Their first question was, ‘Do you think he could be John Elway?’”

 [Brett wanted to find their brother.] ‘It was difficult to explain to him with his child’s open heart  that the laws would not allow us to …find him. I was embarrassed to tell my sons that some people thought it was wrong for them to meet their brother.’…Kip turned to Brett, bursting with a little brother’s mischief. ‘You are not Mom’s oldest!’ Brett said he had already realized it. I saw his hurt and my heart went out to him.”

___________________________

From FMF:

Loretta Young's 'adopted daughter' wasn't adopted at all

Telling my family about my first child--and then going public

ACLU Tramples Adoptee Rights & First Mother Protections

 The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade
Author and adoptee Ann Fessler brings out into the open the history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. If you haven't read this book, you don't understand the past of the women who are now mothers, and grandmothers who felt coerced into surrendering their children to the adoption system and keeping that child a secret.

When Everything Changed Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition
"Among the impressive features of Ms. Collins's book is her genial, fair-minded sympathy, her refusal to smirk at the excesses of the most radical '70s feminists or at the stance of women, among them Phyllis Schlafly, who counseled their sisters to stay home where they belonged." (New York Times Francine Prose )

"'The past is a foreign country' is the kind of hallowed quotation that's resolutely opaque until you stumble on something that drives home its emotional truth. The uncanny feeling it references is that one that recurs frequently as you read When Everything Changed, the absorbing history of feminism and American women's lives by Gail Collins, the resident editorial fount of wry Midwestern common sense at The New York Times.... What Collins does, which so pitiably few pop-history writers do, is bring the stories, the anecdotes that come to life and pull you in." (Elle Ben Dickinson ) Order by clicking on the icon. Please.