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A review by leahtylerthewriter
American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser
5.0
"They gave birth alone and were then pressured or forced to surrender their newborns to strangers who hadn't explained that in doing so, many of these young mothers would never see or hear about their children again."
A nonfiction expose about the unmarried young women, over 3 million in number, who became pregnant after World War II and were forced to surrender their children for adoption.
Ripping off the lid on one of the secrets in American history nobody talks about, Glaser uses impeccable research and follows the personal narratives of a woman named Margaret and her son David. Diving deep into the story of how in the face of rising infertility rates after World War II, the American government and religious institutions created a social, moral, and legal solution by forcing unmarried women to surrender their (mostly white) infants to married couples desperate for a child to contribute to the baby boom.
But that's not all. Pain experiments were conducted on some of these infants during the time they spent in foster care prior to adoption. Oregon State University operated a "practice home" for their Home Ec department using surrendered babies as human dolls. Mixed race babies had their ethnicity changed and birth certificates falsified if they were able to "pass" as white. The adoptive parents were lied to about the pedigree, mental health, or religion of the unmarried couple. The young mothers were shipped off to maternity homes and threatened with juvenile detention if they didn't sign away their parental rights. Amended birth certificates were reissued stating the adoptive parents were the natural-born parents and the original birth certificates were sealed into perpetuity. Adult adoptees found themselves unable to discover who their birth parents were. And all of this was perfectly legal.
None of this came as a shock to me, for it is a major theme in the fiction book I am writing, but most people do not know this happened. It's time to start talking about all the dirty little secrets America is hiding in her closet and this is one that impacted millions of people and caused outrageous pain.
A nonfiction expose about the unmarried young women, over 3 million in number, who became pregnant after World War II and were forced to surrender their children for adoption.
Ripping off the lid on one of the secrets in American history nobody talks about, Glaser uses impeccable research and follows the personal narratives of a woman named Margaret and her son David. Diving deep into the story of how in the face of rising infertility rates after World War II, the American government and religious institutions created a social, moral, and legal solution by forcing unmarried women to surrender their (mostly white) infants to married couples desperate for a child to contribute to the baby boom.
But that's not all. Pain experiments were conducted on some of these infants during the time they spent in foster care prior to adoption. Oregon State University operated a "practice home" for their Home Ec department using surrendered babies as human dolls. Mixed race babies had their ethnicity changed and birth certificates falsified if they were able to "pass" as white. The adoptive parents were lied to about the pedigree, mental health, or religion of the unmarried couple. The young mothers were shipped off to maternity homes and threatened with juvenile detention if they didn't sign away their parental rights. Amended birth certificates were reissued stating the adoptive parents were the natural-born parents and the original birth certificates were sealed into perpetuity. Adult adoptees found themselves unable to discover who their birth parents were. And all of this was perfectly legal.
None of this came as a shock to me, for it is a major theme in the fiction book I am writing, but most people do not know this happened. It's time to start talking about all the dirty little secrets America is hiding in her closet and this is one that impacted millions of people and caused outrageous pain.