This bold book by Ann Fessler is an unflinching account of what happened to these girls who were sent away. That scenario led to irreparable psychological harm. And then the girl was told in no uncertain terms to just go on with her life and forget the birth ever happened. There she awaited the birth of her baby, and within days (and sometimes hours) the child was taken from her and sent out for adoption. A convenient cover story was cooked up, and off the girl went to an aunt's or more likely, a maternity home. The other half-too young for marriage or whose boyfriends refused to accept responsibility-were typically sent away to have the baby.

But if you broke the rules-such as having a 16-year-old daughter who was pregnant-your entire family was shunned.īecause sex education was pretty much nonexistent in the schools or in the home, birth control not available unless you were married (and even then it was sometimes difficult to get), and abortion illegal, girls who found themselves pregnant had one of two options: Get married or give up the baby for adoption. You followed the rules, you did as everyone else did, and you fit in. Their wives stayed home, had babies, and cared for their new families. GIs had come home from World War II, got married, bought homes, found jobs. The 1950s were a magical time-on the surface, that is. This is a heartbreaking, deeply intimate historical account of what happened when girls and young women got pregnant before they were married in a society that had zero tolerance for such behavior. This should be required reading for every woman young and old, but especially for women who became teenagers in the 1950s, 1960s, and very early 1970s. A Powerful, Unflinching Historical Account of Being Unmarried and Pregnant in the '50s and '60s

The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler