The Baby Scoop Era was a period in

anglosphere The Anglosphere is a group of English-speaking world, English-speaking nations that share historical and cultural ties with England, and which today maintain close political, diplomatic and military co-operation. While the nations included in d ...

history starting after the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and ending in the early 1970s, characterized by an increasing rate of pre-marital pregnancies over the preceding period, along with a higher rate of newborn

adoption Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from ...

History

In the United States

From 1945 to 1973, it is estimated that up to 4 million parents in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

had children placed for adoption, with 2 million during the 1960s alone. Annual numbers for non-relative adoptions increased from an estimated 33,800 in 1951 to a peak of 89,200 in 1970, then quickly declined to an estimated 47,700 in 1975.Maza, P.L. (1984). Adoption trends: 1944–1975.
Child Welfare Research Notes #9. Washington, D.C.: Administration for Children, Youth, and Families, 1984. (This does not include the number of infants adopted and raised by relatives.) In contrast, the

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is " ...

estimates that only 14,000 infants were placed for adoption in 2003. This period of history has been documented in scholarly books such as ''Wake Up Little Susie'' and ''Beggars and Choosers'', both by historian

Rickie Solinger Rickie Solinger (born 1947) is an independent historian, curator, and lecturer whose work focuses on reproductive politics, welfare politics, politics of incarceration, race and class, and motherhood. She is the author of ''Wake Up Little Susie: S ...

, and social histories such as the book ''

The Girls Who Went Away ''The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade'' is a 2006 book by Ann Fessler which describes and recounts the experiences of women in the United States who relinquish ...

'' and the documentary, '' A Girl Like Her'', based on the book by Ann Fessler. Fessler is a professor of photography at the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

who exhibited an

art installation Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...

titled ''The Girls Who Went Away''. It is also the theme of the documentary "Gone To A Good Home" by

Film Australia Film Australia was a company established by the Government of Australia to produce films about Australia in 1973. Its predecessors were the Cinema and Photographic Branch (1913–38), the Australian National Film Board (1939–1955, under diffe ...

. Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s,

illegitimacy Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as '' ...

began to be defined in terms of psychological deficits on the part of the mother. At the same time, a liberalization of sexual morals combined with restrictions on access to

birth control Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...

led to an increase in premarital pregnancies. The dominant psychological and social work view was that the large majority of unmarried mothers were better off being separated by adoption from their newborn babies. According to Mandell (2007), "In most cases, adoption was presented to the mothers as the only option and little or no effort was made to help the mothers keep and raise the children". Solinger describes the social pressures that led to this unusual trend, explaining that women who had no control over their reproductive lives were defined by psychological theory as "not-mothers", and that because they had no control over their reproductive lives, they were subject to the ideology of those who watched over them. As such, for unmarried pregnant girls and women in the pre-''

Roe Roe ( ) or hard roe is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses, of fish and certain marine animals such as shrimp, scallop, sea urchins and squid. As a seafood, roe is used both as a cooking, coo ...

'' era, the main chance for attaining home and marriage rested on their acknowledging their alleged shame and guilt, and this required relinquishing their children, with more than 80% of unwed mothers in maternity homes acting in essence as "breeders" for adoptive parents. According to Ellison, from 1960 to 1970, 27 percent of all births to married women between the ages of 15 and 29 were conceived premaritally. This problem was thought to be caused by female

neurosis Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...

, and those who could not procure an

abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregn ...

, legally or otherwise, were encouraged to put up their children for adoption. In popular usage, singer Celeste Billhartz uses the term "baby scoop era" on her website to refer to the era covered by her work "The Mothers Project." A letter on Senator Bill Finch's website uses the term as well. Writer Betty Mandell references the term in her article "Adoption". The term was also used in a 2004 edition of the ''

Richmond Times-Dispatch The ''Richmond Times-Dispatch'' (''RTD'' or ''TD'' for short) is the primary daily newspaper in Richmond, Virginia, Richmond, the capital of Virginia, and the primary newspaper of record for the state of Virginia. Circulation The ''Times-Dispatc ...

''. Infant adoptions began declining in the early 1970s, a decline often attributed to the decreasing birth rate, but which also partially resulted from social and legal changes that enabled middle-class mothers to have an alternative:

single mother A single parent is a person who has a child or children but does not have a spouse or live-in partner to assist in the upbringing or support of the child. Reasons for becoming a single parent include divorce, break-up, abandonment, becoming wid ...

hood. The decline in the fertility rate is associated with the introduction of

the pill The combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP), often referred to as the birth control pill or colloquially as "the pill", is a type of birth control that is designed to be taken orally by women. The pill contains two important hormones: progesti ...

in 1960, the completion of legalization of

artificial birth control Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...

methods, the introduction of

federal funding In the United States, federal assistance, also known as federal aid, federal benefits, or federal funds, is defined as any federal program, project, service, or activity provided by the federal government that directly assists domestic governmen ...

to make

family planning Family planning is the consideration of the number of children a person wishes to have, including the choice to have no children, and the age at which they wish to have them. Things that may play a role on family planning decisions include marita ...

services more available to the young and low income, and the legalization of abortion. Brozinsky (1994) speaks of the decline in newborn adoptions as reflecting a freedom of choice embraced by youth and the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in an increase in the number of unmarried mothers who parented their babies as opposed to having them taken for adoption purposes. "In 1970, approximately 80% of the infants born to single mothers were .. aken for adoption purposes whereas by 1983 that figure had dropped to only 4%." In contrast to numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, from 1989 to 1995 fewer than 1% of children born to never-married women were surrendered for adoption.

In the Commonwealth

A similar social development took place in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

In Canada

Canada's "Baby Scoop Era" refers to the postwar period from 1945 to 1988, when over 400,000 unmarried pregnant girls, mostly aged 15–19, were targeted for their yet-to-be-born infants, because they were unmarried with a child. A large number of these young women were housed in maternity group homes, which were managed by religious orders, such as the

Salvation Army Salvation (from Latin: ''salvatio'', from ''salva'', 'safe, saved') is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, ''salvation'' generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its c ...

, the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, the

United Church A united church, also called a uniting church, is a church formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestant Christian denominations. Historically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state ...

and the

Anglican Church Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the ...

etc. These maternity "homes" were heavily funded by the

Canadian government The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-in-C ...

. There were over 70 maternity homes in Canada which housed between 20 and 200 pregnant women at a time. In Canadian maternity "homes" and hospitals, up to 100% of newborns were removed from their legal mothers after birth and given up for adoption purposes. These newborns were taken under a Health and Welfare protocol. Some professionals of the era considered that the punishment of the mother for her transgression was an important part of the process. Dr. Marion Hilliard of

Women's College Hospital Women's College Hospital is a teaching hospital in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located at the north end of Hospital Row, a section of University Avenue where several major hospitals are located. It currently functions as an independe ...

was quoted in 1956 saying:

The father plays absolutely no part in this. That is part of her rehabilitation. When she renounces her child for its own good, the unwed mother has learned a lot. She has learned an important human value. She has learned to pay the price of her misdemeanor, and this alone, if punishment is needed, is punishment enough...We must go back to a primary set of values and the discipline that starts with the very small child.

The term Baby Scoop Era is similar to the term

Sixties Scoop The Sixties Scoop was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which th ...

, which was coined by Patrick Johnston, author of ''Native Children and the Child Welfare System''. "Sixties Scoop" refers to the Canadian practice, beginning in the 1950s and continuing until the late 1980s, of apprehending unusually high numbers of Native children over the age of 5 years old from their families and fostering or adopting them out. A similar event happened in Australia where Aboriginal children, sometimes referred to as the

Stolen Generation The Stolen Generations (also known as Stolen Children) were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church miss ...

, were removed from their families and placed into internment camps, orphanages and other institutions.

In Australia

A similar period of

forced adoption Forced adoption is the practice of forcefully taking children from their parents and placing them for adoption. It may refer to: * Forced adoption in Australia * Forced adoption in the United Kingdom * Sixties Scoop *"forcibly transferring childr ...

, also known as the "White Stolen Generations", also occurred in Australia. It is generally understood that a decline of adoption during the 1970s was linked to a 1973 law providing for financial assistance to single parents.Parliamentary Paper No. 366, Standing Committee on Social Issues, Report on Adoption Practices, Second Interim Report, Transcripts of Evidence, 16 June 1999 – 25 October 1999

Portrayals in media

*''A girl like her'' documentary film (2011) *''Gone To A Good Home (Film Australia 2006)''. A

National Interest Program in association with Big Island Pictures. Produced in association with the Pacific Film and Television Commission and SBS Independent. *''Everlasting: The Girls Who Went Away'' by Ann Fessler. Described as "a multi-channel, surround-sound audio installation based on oral history interviews Ann Fessler conducted with women who surrendered a baby for adoption in the 1950s and 1960s (as described in the
Calendar," Duke University
retrieved October 22, 2007) *''The Other Mother: A Moment of Truth Movie (1995) (TV)'' Director: Bethany Rooney. Writers (WGA): Carol Schaefer (book), Steven Loring. *''

The Magdalene Sisters ''The Magdalene Sisters'' is a 2002 drama film written and directed by Peter Mullan, about three teenage girls who were sent to Magdalene asylums (also known as 'Magdalene Laundries') homes for women who were labelled as "fallen" by their familie ...

'' (2002) Director: Peter Mullan, Writer: Peter Mullan *''Love, War, Adoption (2007)'' Directed by Suzie Kidnap.

History

In the United States

In the Commonwealth

In Canada

In Australia

Portrayals in media

See also

References

Further reading