Articles Book III - Pg 300-560 (Birthparents) - triadoption

Typed by me on my typewriter at home.
copied by me on my Xerox machine at work.
This material is from Orphan Voyage.
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Humiliating the Unmarried Mother
November '58 release
Life History Study Center
PO Box 457 Ojai, Cal.
"An unpretentious malice may be satisfied with
the silence and fear of the person humiliated."
H. Borschardt "The Conspiracy of the Carpenters"
A correspondent in Portland (Oregon) has sent in a clippirx about
the allotment of $59,000 to the Boysw and Girls1 Aid S~ci..,~,, for
the study of the personality of unmarried mothers. This grant--
not quite enough to answer the $64,000 question--is one of several
similarly made by the National Institute of Mental Health.
One may readily predict what this mstudy9' will reveal, for the
professionals have already decided about the personality of the
unmarried mother, and there will.be no change of consequence. The
results previously obtained in smoke-filled rooms (interdisciplinary
conferences) will be further justified by selection of cases
among ap licants to the Society. the attitude of American official
soc f a1 work to unmarried mother has, indeed, become quite
crystallized. In the words of another correspondent, an unmarried
mother engaged in social work:
"I have been characterized as a whore, a feeble-minded
unwed mother, a person acting out hostility against parents,
an unresolved Oedipal character,..a masoohist, a
selfish person."
And of her work in probation, after more than two years of investigation
into adoption petitions, some thirty a month:
"None of the mothers were ever encouraged in any way to
retain their children. I can only find this to be an incredible
percentage...Every conceivable pressure, economic,
psychological, religious, legal, physiological, was brought
to bear on them to give the child away."
This is the view not only of an "insideru, but of another. In
the December 1955 issue of Canadian Welfare, Mrs. Svanhuit Josie,
in an article entitled: "The American caricature of the Unmarried
Mother, writes r
"Today the 'experts1 generally attribute unmarried motherhood
to unresolved parent-child conflict and say it is an
'unrealistic way out of inner difficulties1 of the mother.
(The psychological depths of the father are left unplumbed.)
If the mother is abnormal it follows of course that she is
not a fit person to raise her own child. Obviously then it
becomes in the best interest of the child to be separated
from her. Since illegitimate children are today practically
the sole source of children for adoption...the coincidence
of the rise of this latest theory with the Hollywoodinspired
demand for children is disturbing.'