''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 relinquished babies for adoption between 1950 and the ''
Roe v. Wade
''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many federal and s ...
'' decision in 1973.
About
Fessler conceived of the book through her own experience looking for her biological mother. As a documentary filmmaker, installation artist, and author, Fessler first produced several autobiographical installations on adoption; two featured her previous short films ''Cliff & Hazel'' about her adoptive family, and ''Along the Pale Blue River'' (2001/2013) about her search for a yearbook picture of her mother. At each installation site, Fessler invited audience members to write and post their own adoption stories and based on the anonymous stories left behind by first mothers, she initiated an oral history project to collect the women's stories.
In 2002, Fessler began interviewing women who lost children to adoption between 1945-1973, when an unprecedented 1.5 million babies were surrendered under tremendous social pressure. She collected over 100 oral histories of women who had relinquished their children and the shame and guilt they felt which had effectively silenced them. The book uses these oral histories to analyze the social contexts of adoption, including the pressures placed on the birth mother by family, adoption agencies, and society at large to give up the child for adoption, and the long-term psychological consequences for this event on her in the "
baby scoop era
The Baby Scoop Era was a period in anglosphere history starting after the end of World War II 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 newb ...
."
Oral stories in the book were highly critical of homes for unwed mothers, particularly the Florence Crittenton Homes, and their coercive practices and the requirement of the women in it to give up their children for adoption. Social workers in the homes classified the primarily white unwed mothers as neurotic or morally bankrupt and subjected them to extreme secrecy and psychological intimidation. However, unwed African-American women were expected to keep their children due to the stereotypes of the time that deemed black women were sexually promiscuous.
In 2006, the book was a finalist for the
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Women's Way Ballard Book Prize in 2008, a prize given annually to a female author who makes a significant contribution to the dialogue about women's rights.