First Mothers

The emotional toil and punishment young girls went through when they became pregnant

By Lara Bradley/The Sudbury Star
Lifestyles – Monday, November 13, 2006

They never “gave up” their babies. They surrendered them.

Between the two expressions is a gaping hole of difference.

November is adoption awareness month. For birth mothers, or first mothers as many preferred to be called, who surrendered their children during a time when unwed mothers were automatically assumed to be unfit mothers, it’s a time to reflect on their loss.

For most of the women, it was never a matter of making the decision to give up their children. Without any form of government financial assistance or support from their families, they were steered firmly into doing the “right thing” by social workers, as well as by those who ran homes for unwed mothers.

“There were no options,” said Esther Tardif. “If there was welfare, I didn’t know about it.”

“That I gave him up is a fraud,” said Mary. “I didn’t give him up. People don’t understand the heartache.”

Tardif and Mary (she didn’t want to give her name on the grounds that it would hurt her son’s adoptive family) sat down with The Sudbury Star to talk about adoption issues. While wanting to present a positive story on reunions that will potentially become possible when Bill 183 is fully implemented next year, as well as the existence of the Sudbury Adoption Support Group, their own stories unfolded bit by bit. What the women experienced in the late 1960s can not ever be characterized as positive.

“We are all told: We would forget our babies. If we truly loved them, then we would give them up for adoption. Our next child would replace our first. How any woman could tell that to another, I’ll never know,” said Mary.

If they kept their child, they were reminded that “no man would ever want us,” said Mary.

Social workers also drove home the idea the child, born out of wedlock, would be stigmatized in the community, called names. Just thinking about those names still causes the women such pain.

“You were made to feel such shame,” she said.

“It was such a permanent solution for a temporary problem,” Tardif said.

The women never forgot their babies and other children they bore, although loved and treasured, didn’t replace the one they had lost. They still worried and yearned for that first born child.

“Us first moms didn’t ever get over the loss of our children to adoption – just learned to cope with it,” said Tariff.

Tardif came to Sudbury as a teenager to learn how to be an X-ray technologist. From a big farming family a couple hours away, she described herself as “really naive, really sheltered.”

She became pregnant in 1968. That was the end of her studies. When her situation became apparent, Tardif was quickly shown the door.

“There was such a stigma to it,” she said. “Can you imagine that now?”

Because she lived so far away from home there was no need to send her away to a home for unwed mothers. Instead she kept to herself, alone in her apartment for months.

After she had the baby, she was denied seeing him.

“I had for beg for a peek,” she said.

Tardif found out later that he spent three weeks in foster care before adoptive parents were found for him.

“Once we signed, the door was slammed shut,” said Tardif.

Because she was only 19 when she had the baby, her parents also had to sign documents with the Children’s Aid Society. They told her sisters, when they left home, not to do as Esther had done.

Another unbearable moment came at the court-house.

“The Crown attorney was very cruel,” she said. “He told me: ‘I bet any money you’re going to be here in a year.’ ”

There was no question of Tardif returning to her family after the baby was born. Out of funds, she had to quickly look for work.

unwed mothers

The Second World War had been a kinder time for those who bore children out of wedlock with both jobs and daycare available to women. But when the men returned, the women went back to the home and to the social expectations of their gender. Where society might have turned a blind eye to a pregnant woman whose “husband” had been killed in battle, by the 1950s took a very harsh view of pregnancy out of wedlock. In Gone to An Aunt’s, author Anne Petrie chronicles her own experience and that of other girls who surrendered their children, as well as the climate of the times.

“Unwed mothers should be punished and they should be punished by taking their children away.” said Dr. Marion Hilliard of Women’s College Hospital, in a Daily Telegraph article of November 1956.

Trouble was a lot of sex, unprotected sex, was going on. In 1953, Alfred Kinsey discovered that half of unmarried white middle class women (the group he studied) had had premarital sex. However, birth control was only available to the married.

“You had to show your marriage licence to your doctor,” said Tardif. Where in the past, some evangelical groups had tried to support husband-less mothers, beginning in the mid-1950s there was a strong push to get these women to give their babies up for adoption. While theoretically women were given a choice, it was made clear there was really only one answer.

As review of maternity homes in Metropolitan Toronto, in 1960, reiterated this position:

“Social workers and others serving unmarried mothers have arrived, as a result of experience, at the conviction that adoption is the best plan for most illegitimate children as well as for most unmarried mothers.”

There was also a ready supply of couples eager to take these children.

In Unmarried Mothers (1961), sociologist Clark Vincent commented on an emerging pattern:

“We predict that if the demand for adoptable infants continues to exceed the supply … unwed mothers will be ‘punished’ by having their children taken from them right after birth. A policy like this would not be … labeled explicitly as ‘punishment’ … it would be implemented through such labels … as ‘scientific findings’, ‘the best interests of the child’, ‘rehabilitation of the unwed mother.’ ”

sent away

Mary was 16 years old when she became pregnant in 1967. Her boyfriend had been pressuring her for months to have sex before she gave in. She became pregnant after the first time.

“A lot of men simply walked away. That’s what happened with me. It was all the girl’s responsibility,” she said.

Her family sent her away to a home for unwed mothers in Scarborough and then later to stay with another family member. Like many young women of her generation, she disappeared for a year.

“I was sent away so nobody would know. Everybody in the town knew,” she said.

Mary was told she had shamed her family, shamed her community and shamed her church. One of the things that continues to trouble her was the assumption that everyone else’s feelings were so much more important than her own. She was the invisible one in this equation.

“We couldn’t go to high school. It was like we were abandoned by society,” she said.

Mary remembers that two girls did decide to keep their babies. The other girls were told not to talk to them because they had made such a selfish decision.

When the pregnant unwed women went into labour they were kept separate from the married women in the hospital.

“We were told we would upset the married women,” she said.

Mary kept silent as she struggled with labour, left alone in a small room. She did cry out when minutes after getting birth the nurse began to roughly manipulate her to get the after-birth out.

“‘You’re hurting me,’ I told her. She punched me in the stomach as hard as she could and then leaned in close. Real quiet she said: ‘You’re getting the pain you deserve.’ ”

After begging and begging, she briefly got to hold her son.

“Just think of the power the doctors and nurses and social workers had over you,” she said. “Holding my son is something I’ll never forget.”

Days later she walked out of the hospital back to the home for unwed mothers. While she walked she begged God to take her. She remember getting inside, planting herself by the window.

“I watched to see who would take my baby. I’ve been watching ever since.”

She returned home a zombie.

“There was no support, no counselling. Society was cruel and inhumane. No one ever spoke to you about your loss,” Mary said.

SUPPORT