AH THE NOSTALGIA: TEENAGE MOTHERHOOD 40 YEARS AGO

As the feminist blogger on the People magazine beat, I want to highlight a very good article in this week's issue profiling several unwed teenage mothers of a bygone era.  As was customary back in the day, they were forced by their families to disappear to maternity homes and give birth in secrecy, often being treated like delinquents in the process.  They were accorded neither agency nor compassion in the process.  Nancy Horgan, aged 56, recounts her experience in 1968 as follows:

The birth was humiliating.  I was dropped off at the hospital entirely on my own.  After laboring alone all night,  I was taken to a big room and strapped to a delivery table.  In the lamp over my head I could see the reflection of the child being born.  When they noticed that I would see, they tipped it away; the child was for them to see, not for me.

I named the baby Chris and asked every day to see him.  A social worker said, "I have these papers, and your father wants them signed now."  In a file she wrote, "We are going to have problems with this girl.  She talks about that baby all the time."  Several days after the birth, the head of the hospital showed up.  I said, "You can't keep me from him.  He's mine."  She said, "Yes, unfortunately he is, and let's hope it doesn't happen again."  Some woman put me in a wheelchair and pushed me up to the nursery window.  I asked, "Can I hold him?"  She said, "No. Are you done?"  Then the social worker took Chris away. 

Comments

[Sydney]

According to a friend of my father's, who had an "illegitmate" baby in the early 60's, they didn't provide analgesics for the unmarried mothers during labor at the hospital she gave birth in. Aparently the idea was that if the mother experienced enough pain during the birth, maybe she'd think a bit harder the next time she decided to spread her legs. Nice.

[claire]

a movie, based on true stories, that chronicles this to the extreme is "the magdalene sisters" about laundry facilities in ireland where young women were sent to work and repent for having babies or even just being pretty enough to get attention from boys (and therefore needing to be scared out of sex). seriously F*ed up stuff, but a highly recomended movie.
it is an amazing, intense 4-hanky flick. the DVD has a documentary too, with interviews of women the characters were based on.

[ann adams]

I was treated more humanely but the process was the same.

The "home" was kind, if strict, and my parents left the final decision to me. Quite unusual for 1953. I did give up my daughter but I got to keep her with me for five days. The women who ran the home wanted us to be sure.

Still, the shame was there when I went home at barely 15 and tried to return to school. It was two years of hell.

And what happened to the 17 year old who raped me? Nothing, of course. His word against mine and the girl always lost.

[ann adams]

P. S. I was sent here by my good friend "L." of The Homesick Home. I sign in over there as "granny".

[Richard]

I don't condone the way Horgan was treated, but should our culture be as welcoming and accepting of a 14-year-old in not committed relationship having a baby, as say, a 24-year-old in a committed relationship? Can we agree that it's probably a mistake of fairly large proportions to become pregnant when you have neither the emotional nor financial wherewithal to deal with it? In some communities today being an unwed teen mother is the rule, rather than the exception (I’m thinking primarily urban black communities were the ratio is 3-1 single teen pregnancies versus adult-with-committed-partner pregnancies.) I hope Horgan isn’t suggesting that should be “okay.”

And a provocative question: Don't you think the treatment those girls received had the effect of causing all girls of like age and situation to be extraordinarily careful in their sexual relationships? That is, don't you think it was an effective deterrent to young girls becoming complacent or careless when protecting against an unwanted pregnancy?

[The Grouch]

Sure, Richard, it was probably a deterrent. Burning teenage mothers alive after they gave birth would probably also have been a deterrent. Who cares?

As for whether or not 14-year-olds having sex is "okay"--of course not. But they should be treated cruelly or like delinquents--there's a reason 14 is below the age of consent. They're usually manipulated into having sex by older men. And they should have the final say in what happens to their children. They should, after pregnancy, be treated like adults. Because their childhoods are over after pregnancy, whether they abort or choose adoption or raise their kids themselves. 14-year-old mothers are not "okay," but the fault lies in deep-rooted community or family problems, not in the individual mothers.

[The Grouch]

They should not be treated cruelly--duh.

[Starfoxy]

I think the point isn't to view teen pregnancy into a pro or con, the main point is that everyone wrongly points to the 50's as the era when kids were good and teen pregnancy didn't exist. The article clarifies that teen pregnancy did happen, and that it was torture for the girls who experienced it. They were being punished for being sluts, not for being pregnant.
Most kids don't want to get pregnant- the few who do often want to because they have an unrealistic idea of what parenthood is like. This article also points out that treating teen mothers like crap is an insufficient deterrent to pregnancy, and a more effective method would be education on contraception, how conception works, and what parenthood is like.
The most poignant part of this to me, is that the mothers were taken away and hidden and treated shamefully, but the fathers never missed a beat. Slut-punishing at it's finest.

[Helen]

This makes me so sad. I feel like crying.

[The Happy Feminist]

Can we agree that it's probably a mistake of fairly large proportions to become pregnant when you have neither the emotional nor financial wherewithal to deal with it? . . . I hope Horgan isn’t suggesting that should be “okay.”

Horgan is merely recounting her experience. Would you rather that she say, "I'm a slut who deserved to be punished?"

In some communities today being an unwed teen mother is the rule, rather than the exception (I’m thinking primarily urban black communities were the ratio is 3-1 single teen pregnancies versus adult-with-committed-partner pregnancies.)

There has always been the option of placing a child up for adoption to a family better suited to care for him or her (although admittedly that option may not be as available to black mothers due to racism in our society). Furthermore, despite the assault on the right to choose, abortion is an option today as well. I have to respect the right of unwed teenaged mothers today to choose to keep their babies and to work at being the best mothers they can be. Surely, Richard, you aren't suggesting that we should make poor expectant mothers get abortions?

Of course, back in the era we're talking about, abortion was not an option. Instead, the solution was to force the mother to give birth and to punish for doing so.