History of Adoption as I know it

Folks, the more you know the history of something, the more you KNOW about something.

What a naive fool I was at 16.

Here is the history of adoption as I now know it. Thank you Rickie Soilinger, for being a history major and feeling a need for woman's rights in reproduction to be known.

In the beginning of time, there was not the word teenager. Back in the day, when a woman started her period, she would find a husband and start her family... Do you all remember Little House on the Prairie?

When we all started to live longer, the marrying age wasn't 12 years old anymore, and they came up with the term "teenager".

Back in these days, slavery was being abolished. It was no longer legal for Americans to buy slaves... BUT if a slave was already owned, and that slave got pregnant and had a baby, the newborn baby was instantly owned by the slave owner. With this mentality, the slave owners started controlling the females reproductively for their gain, more free laborers. Slave owners were raping their women slaves and basically enslaving their own offspring.

Now remember, back then, contraceptives... rubbers, the pill, anything to control fertility... was illegal.

Women had no rights to choose if they wanted to have a child. Back then, you only had sex to have a baby... even being married, if you were not trying to have a baby, it was illegal to have sex. ...

Fornication is what they called it... But how can you prove there has been fornication if you are married. But if you had sex and were not married, YOU WERE FORNICATING!!! And get this, men were not charged with fornication because it was the woman's fault for tempting them and them losing control of their actions.
Can you already see a need for abortion because of lack of contraceptives. Lots of slaves made a GOOD mother decision to abort her unborn child to save their child the life of a slave, to be owned by someone.

Young woman that found themselves pregnant, most likely not from flaunting her stuff... but for just being a victim of a man that lost control of his body... ran away to cities where they could melt into the crowd. They could start over, whether by having an abortion or trying to find ways to provide for her child. Which back then, was near to impossible. Woman did not get paid good wages, but in a city, a woman could control her fertility. ... Ways of contraceptives and access for abortions was easier and more accessible in a city. Quite different than living in a small community where everyone knows you by name and there is only one community doctor... It is said that young white women in the city were far away from their own mothers and from family supervision which lead them to ruin because no one was training them for their natural roles or protecting their virtue.

For you see, back in this day, woman were judged on their chastity. Only the prudest of woman were respected. Back in these days, an unchaste woman was classified the same level/class as slaves... second citizens as were their "bastard" children.

"The mentality in the late 19th century - having lost their chastity, they had lost their womenly identity, and did not have the capacity to be adequate mothers. Only by keeping and learning to mother her infant would this kind of girl redeem her womanhood and her value as a human being. Woman who abandoned their baby (generally because of extreme poverty and desperation or unwed mothers whose babies died were unredeemed failures." Rickie Solinger PREGNANCY AND POWER... A Short History of Reproductive Politics In America.

Abortions were rising, especially for white American women, "puritan blood"... society was freaking out, fearing abortions were thinning out the population of the white people.

"Abortion risked the racial future of the United States." Rickie Solinger PREGNANCY AND POWER... A Short History of Reproductive Politics In America.

Another thing society feared... babies being raised in poverty, continuing the cycle of poverty. Especially when we have all these affluent women that are having fertility problems or are too prude to fornicate even to try for a baby... okay, now I am just being sarcastic... but you catch my drift. ... JUDGEMENT was going on.

"If a poor mother fulfilled her parental duties properly, in ways approved by self-appointed charity and reform authorities she could be a mother to her child. If she did not met standards-- if she was not married or could not afford to stay home all day -- she had no biological or custody right to keep her child." Rickie Solinger PREGNANCY AND POWER... A Short History of Reproductive Politics In America.

So, in other words... all you mothers out there that are not stay at home mothers, you would be considered unfit mothers and have your babies taken away and given to the rich women that had a husband provide them with the luxury to stay home.

Beginning in the 1920's, more groups started advocating legal contraception.

Folks, it wasn't until 1944 that the male condom was perfected... AND it was not until 1972 that the Supreme Court ruled that unmarried people have the right to contraception.

You figure, before then, such things were seized and destroyed.

"The Comstock Law did enable postal agents to seize huge quantities of contraception-related items. Historian Janet Brodie provides this extraordinary list of Comstock's yield in 1880, giving us some idea of the industriousness of his agents but also a glimpse of what was surely only a tiny fraction of the total amount of materials in circulation that year:"Seized and Destroyed

165 different obscene books
64,094 rubber articles for immoral use
4,185 boxes of pills and powders for abortion
3,421 letters and packages ready for mailing
70,280 opened letters
6,000 names of dealers in obscene materials
901,125 names and addresses of people to whom "smut dealers" sent goods.
Rickie Solinger PREGNANCY AND POWER... A Short History of Reproductive Politics In America.

We can all thank Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett, the pioneers of legalizing contraception and legalizing and disseminating "family planning" in the United States!!!

Okay, so time out... what is the big uproar with contraception and controlling our fertility, again???... I know, I had to keep being reminded, we live in such a different world of reality...

"Birth control threatened to undermine the ideology of feminine chastity and was a threat to family life... birth control could simply poison the wellspring of white woman's political agency (her maternal capacity)." Rickie Solinger PREGNANCY AND POWER... A Short History of Reproductive Politics In America.

Folks, there is so much history and details that have got us to where we are today, but let's just jump to World War II shall we.

World War II started in 1939 and lasted until 1945.

Remember "A League of Her Own" with Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna and Rosie... just to name a few??? Well, that is just how it was during World War II. The war took the majority of our men. Us women stepped up to the plate and entered the men's world of sports and factories... providing for our families AND taking care of our children just fine without the men around. Us women got a taste of equality!!!
Well the men came home and did not like us liberated women!... And I am sure, us women were not going to give up our liberation that easily.

What to do??? ... "LEAVE IT TO BEAVER" folks. ... Yep, June Cleaver reminded us what the "American Dream" really is.... Remember, we want to be a house wife with two kids and live in a crackerjack neighborhood.

Well, now we have the generation of "The Girls Sent Away", Ann Fessler has written about them... What are the neighbors going to think? Let's pretend it didn't happen and force our daughter to give her baby away so that we can save her class status and save the status of her bastard child that will get adopted by a higher class and they can pretend "AS IF BORN TO".

And there you have it, the starting of secrets and lies. We have come a long way. Awareness is the key! You can imagine my upset finding that I fell for societies judgment over the love for my baby. All a baby needs is the love of his/her mother.
Family preservation folks! In order to really KNOW family preservation, we have to KNOW life without family. Let's not let the generations of old fail to teach us.

LOVE ONE ANOTHER ADOPT THE MOTHER