I've been reading about the BSE... or Baby Scoop Era, or Era of Mass Surrender... recently and I was shocked (but not shocked to be shocked) by how inequitably women were treated, especially young unmarried mothers. According to what I read, a single mother could not rent housing, get a job, get welfare benefits, open a credit card account, get Medicaid (which didn't even exist till the mid-60's anyway,) have her pregnancy covered by her parents' insurance, or get higher education, and a lot of other really unfair things. Basically just a lot of stigma in every area of life.
My question, though, is about the women who did manage to parent, presumably with the help of their families starting out. (I know a lot of women had their children taken for adoption, but not 100%.) How long would it take before the stigma wore off and she was allowed to do these things? At what point would people just sort of... forget about it, I guess... and let her do what she needed to, to support herself and her child?
I'm aware the BSE ended in the 1970's. What I'm wondering, though, is when an individual woman who bore a child outside of marriage would be allowed to be financially independent after giving birth? At what point would she be able to take the role of supporting her child, rather than the two of them being supported by her own parents?
Just asking because I wasn't born yet, and my reading has not really explained this, so I thought someone with personal experience might be able to fill in the holes. Thanks!
2010-04-20T23:59:25Z
Kitty, that's interesting (and sad,) but not really what I was asking.
Are you saying that the primary issue was childcare, and if parents helped with that, Mom could work? And society would let her do that?
Or that Mom would NEVER have the chance to support herself financially, till the sexual revolution of the 70's?
What if the baby was born in the 1940's? That means thirty years would have passed. What if the Mom's parents DIED or became physically too old to work and had to retire before the 70's? What if she didn't have extended family to pick up the slack?
I appreciate the time you took to answer, but if anything I'm more confused. I was assuming that at some point, Mom would become the supporter, not the one being supported, (probably once some time had passed and the freshness of the stigma wore off.)
Is that untrue? Would she be perpetually be dependent on a parent or spouse or extended family unit to provide for her?
If so, I feel even worse, how sad for her. :-(
Randy2010-04-20T23:24:55Z
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I'll always remember the time my mother wanted to get her tubes tied. She had already had 3 kids and adopted me so more kids the old fashioned way just wasn't going to happen. Anyway, she got it all checked out and arranged with the Doctor but before he would do it my mother had to get my father to sign a paper saying he was aware of the surgery and that he consented to it. Needless to say, my mother came into the house, walked over to him and said two little words to him......."sign it!!!!"
He did.
And that was in 1977 actually.
Not necessarily an adoption story but still in keeping with the points of your first paragraph.
I agree that you've gotten some excellent responses. If I understand correctly, you are not questioning why/how it happened, but how some mothers were able to parent their children in spite of the social pressure?
I don't think there was a time frame that was set in stone as to when a single mom could/would become the supporter ,or when the stigma would wear off. It would depend on her age, education, experience and most importantly - did she have help from a friend or family member in the way of daycare? Were they in a small town where everyone knew everyone's business and passed judgment on a regular basis, or in a large city where they could blend in ?
Some single moms WERE perpetually dependent on a parent or spouse because their self esteem was totally shattered having been made to feel that they had scandalized their family or community. Many of us had a subconscious inner drive to make sure we appeared respectable thereafter, and that often meant jumping into marriages that weren't in our best interests.
Some of the moms I know who did manage to do it on their own, quite frankly came up with a lie to tell neighbors and potential employers so as not to bring attention to the fact that they had a child while unmarried. The one I heard the most was that they had a husband away in Viet Nam or deceased.
It's only natural for those of you who weren't a part of that period in our history to wonder how it was even possible that that this woman's abuse issue was allowed to take place. But it did.
You have been given a lot of really good answers already. I suppose that some of the situations could be considered "individual" as well. I have heard of mothers who kept babies in the 1950s and eventually got married to someone.
But otherwise, they were always dependent on family to help them, until the child was grown ...or at least until the child needed less care. They wouldn't be self-supporting for the reasons already given by other answerers here.
Women in general during BSE times, and before(except for WW2 when the men were away fighting) had a hard time finding decent employment and were discriminated in education as well.
The US Civil Rights laws of the 1970s, and 80s were the change that outlawed the discrimination, but family pressures can still be powerful. Unmarried mothers and fathers are still vulnerable and there are still bad laws on the books.
ETA: one thing to keep in mind also is that if a mother and her family were keeping a child in the 1950s, and the mother actually could get a job..say, at a factory...CPS was less voracious and powerful than it is today. So, they had at least a chance of being left alone by the gov't, depending on where they lived. Today, CPS is much larger and more powerful.
When I was growing up my best friend's older sister got pregnant. The sister was a good bit older. It was a huge scandal. In fact, I wasn't supposed to play over at their house for awhile because the sister kept the baby. Her mother forbid her to, but she showed up at home with the baby and they let her in. As far as I know she didn't have trouble getting a job. She worked as a secretary. She moved out and got her own apartment before the baby was a year old because she used to fight a lot with her mother. But she still had her mother watch her baby during the day. I'm not sure about credit cards because back then we all used cash and checks a lot more. I do know that when a woman got divorced or widowed back then the bank would often yank your credit cards right away, but the reason given was that you didn't have a source of income not so much that you were single.
The biggest issue that my young, big ears heard about was that she had a tough time socially. Everyone got used to her bringing her baby around like she was just a regular baby and not a scandal, but dating was a problem. Nice boys didn't want to bring her and her baby home to meet their family. The other kind of men wouldn't leave her alone.
I know of several women in my a family who had children out of wedlock and kept their children. Some had their children in the 1950's. The 3 I personally know of, were able to find housing on their own, but lied and said that they were widowed. As far as people forgetting the stigma associated with having a bastard child, well...my a family STILL talks about those women in a negative light, and one of those women is dead.
The other 2 went on to marry, and their spouses raised the child as their own. Keep in mind there was no child support enforcement back then, either. If you did not have a family to help you, you were pretty much s.o.l. It was also next to impossible for a women to go to college after her child had been born.
Social stigmas were major forces for women surrendering. While it was possible for them to get jobs, remember that women made much, much less then men did back then. There was no ERA in place.
I will echo what Randy said about his mother. I had my third child at the age of 22, and had been married since I was 18. We knew we did not want anymore children after our last was born. We also knew our last child would be delivered via c-section, so it made perfect sense to have a tubal ligation at the same time. This was in 1988. I STILL had to have a note from my husband stating that it was also his desire to have MY tubes tied. 1988. For realz. The notion that women are property and could not do anything without a man is not as antiquated as we think.