American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Secret History of Adoption
A New York Times Notable Book The shocking truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their search to find each other. During the Baby Boom in 1960s America, women were encouraged to stay home and raise large families, but sex and childbirth were taboo subjects. Premarital sex was common, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle fell in love and became pregnant. Her enraged family sent her to a maternity home, and after she gave birth, she wasn't even allowed her to hold her own son. Social workers threatened her with jail until she signed away her parental rights. Her son vanished, his whereabouts and new identity known only to an adoption agency that would never share the slightest detail about his fate. Claiming to be acting in the best interests of all, the adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and placed them with hopeful families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. Adoption agencies and other organizations that purported to help pregnant women struck unethical deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific assessments, and shamed millions of women into surrendering their children. Gabrielle Glaser dramatically demonstrates the power of the expectations and institutions that Margaret faced. Margaret went on to marry and raise a large family with David's father, but she never stopped longing for and worrying about her firstborn. She didn't know he spent the first years of his life living just a few blocks away from her; as he grew, he wondered about where he came from and why he was given up. Their tale--one they share with millions of Americans--is one of loss, love, and the search for identity. Adoption's closed records are being legally challenged in states nationwide. Open adoption is the rule today, but the identities of many who were adopted or who surrendered a child in the postwar decades are locked in sealed files. American Baby illuminates a dark time in our history and shows a path to reunion that can help heal the wounds inflicted by years of shame and secrecy.
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Community Reviews
“Every family, every adoptee, every birth mother has their story.” Gabrielle Glaser’s American Baby is David and Margaret’s. “Their tale–whose basic contours they share with millions of Americans–is one of loss, love, and parallel searches for identity: one a mother who lost a firstborn; the other a son grafted onto a family of loving strangers, wondering where he had come from.”
“The story of Margaret Erle Katz and David Rosenberg does not have a tidy ending; it was never a tidy story.” It’s a tale of two families who lose each other, link once more, “tread cautiously around each other. They live on opposite sides of the country; they have different lives. They share biology, but not history, and a half century of lost time is irretrievable.”
In American Baby, Gabrielle Glaser explores and exposes the systemic secrecy and strong arm strategy against unwed mothers. If unwed, a woman is guilty of “wilful intercourse, which resulted in the birth of a child.” The woman’s conviction is transformed into a celebration simply by the presence of a wedding ring. The fundamental orthodoxy of adoption holds that married parents can offer a better life than unmarried ones, which implies that they are more deserving and unlocks a Pandora’s box of ethics.
Adoption is often explained through the well-intentioned trope, “I may not have carried you, but God chose you for us.” Biological kids are born, but adoptive children are chosen. Rather than reassurance, however, this cliche often leaves the unspoken question, What was it about me that made my birth mother not choose me? Ultimately, adoption is a tragic trade: one family’s loss is another’s chance at new life.
I couldn't help but note the parallels between foreign adoption with Du Bois’ On Education. Glaser quotes Stephanie Drenka, a Texas-based writer who was adopted from Korea in 1986: “We were raised with white privilege in white worlds, and yet we are perpetual foreigners within it.” Drenka expresses the pervasiveness of the hegemonic hierarchy that continues to affect/infect today’s society. A sobering yet hopeful must-read.
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