"...no man can be sure that he may not be to-morrow the victim of a spirit of injustice, by which he may be a gainer to-day." Hamilton, Federalist 78

The Baby Scoop Era: Research, Education and Inquiry

Founded in 2007 by Karen Wilson Buterbaugh BSERI is dedicated to research, education and inquiry into the period of American adoption history known as the Baby Scoop Era. The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative is established on principles of historical accuracy, truth and justice. We demand acknowledgement of the historical truth surrounding adoption practice in the United States during the Baby Scoop Era. We demand recognition for the millions of women who were systematically denied their inalienable right to raise their infant sons and daughters.

The American Maternity Home Movement experienced radical change after 1945. Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh's research into the textbooks, papers, and conference presentations of social workers and sociologists of the Baby Scoop Era has revealed a movement in flux. Once the province of altruistic Christian women, the movement rapidly moved from a supportive model to a psychoanalytic model after WW II. Homes that had sheltered unmarried pregnant women, and trained them in the life skills they needed to successfully raise their children, began instead to promote closed, stranger adoption to married couples as the best social solution to the challenges presented by single motherhood. The change occurred as social workers began to practice within Maternity Homes, eventually pushing the Christian women out. The social work profession brought with it a psychoanalytic bias that informed their practice and radically altered the outcome of single pregnancy during this period. These practices persisted until 1972, a period of great social and technological change in the United States. After 1972, the number of domestic adoptions dropped dramatically.

After the early 1970s, easy availability of contraception, vastly increased economic and educational opportunities, and growing acceptance of single parenthood presented women with many more options then they had before. The years between 1945 and 1972, with its maternity reformatories, institutionally induced guilt, psychoanalytic explanations for single motherhood, and coercive adoption practices became a brief footnote in American social history, except to the cohort of women who survived these practices. These women carried into their adult lives unaddressed burdens of worry, pain and a corrosive secret. The effects of social work practice of these years are very much alive and well in the lives of millions of American women These years are called the Baby Scoop Era, and these women, Baby Scoop Mothers.

Please take a few moments to peruse some of the research amassed by Karen W. Buterbaugh. This is what the social workers of the time were thinking and saying about us, the Baby Scoop Mothers.

Activism Alert

The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative (BSERI) is participating in the initial stages of a research project. The project is the work of two psychology researchers in the UK . It will explore adoption loss during the BSE with subsequent development of PTSD. We are collecting personal accounts regarding Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in mothers who lost children to adoption during the Baby Scoop Era (approximately post WWII through Roe v. Wade).

If you are willing to participate in this first round of data collection, please write up your story (include dates, and all physical, mental, medical, and emotional consequences post-surrender) and email it to us.

Origins, Inc. NSW (Australia) is collecting submissions for Oz, Trackers International is collecting them for the UK, and BSERI is collecting submissions from mothers in the United States.

Please keep your submission to no more than 2 pages, single spaced. Names and other identifying information will not be published. Your submission MUST be accompanied by a note stating that it may be used anonymously for this research project.

If you have any questions, please contact BSERI at bseri@babyscoopera.com

CHILDREN FIRST, WHAT OUR SOCIETY MUST DO, AND IS NOT DOING, FOR OUR CHILDREN TODAY, Penelope Leach (1994), Alfred A. Knopf, NY

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care, and necessary social services , and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhhod are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or our of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

" Some of the _____mothers who placed their children fifteen or more years before the interviews took place felt extreme pressure and even coercion to do so. .... Many _____mothers who felt coerced or tricked into placing their children for adoption were not at peace with the adoption. The resentment one _____mother expressed regarding feeling forced into adoption was typical of those who had felt coercion: ‘Coercion, lies, and deceit... That worked on me... The mother-child bond is really strong. I think that’s more important than having two parents. My baby was denied breast milk, knowing his grandparents. I was denied watching him grow and have a life together. Fear is what makes people sign relinquishing papers, fear that it (keeping the baby) will make their life worse than better. (_____ mothers’) fear is taken advantage of... It is deceitful. It (coercive adoption) is not really concerned with the best interest of the mom and baby... It’s concerned with receiving healthy, white babies for people’."

- Charles T. Kenny, Ph.D. " _____MOTHER, GOOD MOTHER, Her Story of Heroic Redemption", a booklet published by the Family Research Council and the National Council for Adoption (2007)

How the adoption industry "professionals" saw us and our babies :

"... the tendency growing out of the demand for babies is to regard unmarried mothers as breeding machines...(by people intent) upon securing babies for quick adoptions." - Leontine Young, "Is Money Our Trouble?" (paper presented at the National Conference of Social Workers, Cleveland, 1953)

"Because there are many more married couples wanting to adopt newborn white babies than there are babies, it may almost be said that they rather than out of wedlock babies are a social problem. (Sometimes social workers in adoption agencies have facetiously suggested setting up social provisions for more 'babybreeding'.)" SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS, National Association of Social Workers, (Out-of-print) copyright 1964

". . . unwed mothers may have placed their children for adoption for any of the following reasons . . . (2) they were advised or pressured to release the baby . . ." COUNSELING THE UNWED MOTHER, by Helen E. Terkelsen, copyright 1964

"If the demand for adoptable babies continues to exceed the supply then it is quite possible that, in the near future, unwed mothers will be "punished" by having their children taken from them right after birth. A policy like this would not be executed -- nor labeled explicitly -- as "punishment." Rather, it would be implemented through such pressures and labels as "scientific findings," "the best interests of the child," "rehabilitation of the unwed mother," and "the stability of the family and society." Unmarried Mothers, by Clark Vincent, 1961

"Not all unwed mothers in this country are regarded as presenting the same degree of social problem. For example, the unmarried mother who has financial means or supporting relatives and friends, who can leave her own locality or state to have the baby in privacy or whose baby is needed for adoption by particular social agencies, and particularly the unwed mother who does not become an economic liability on the tax-paying public - these receive less public attention and blame. Censure is strong and unwavering... in the case of unwed mothers whose babies do not serve a social function. CHILD WELFARE: POLICIES AND PRACTICE, Lela B. Costin (1972), McGraw-Hill Book Company, (Professor, The Jane Addams Graduate School of Social Work, University of Illinois)

"Faced with insufficient money, an unwed pregnant girl may find herself forced into an unsuitable marriage or pressured into an ill-considered plan to surrender her child for adoption in return for the payment of her medial and living expenses during pregnancy." CHILD WELFARE: POLICIES AND PRACTICE, Lela B. Costin (1972), McGraw-Hill Book Company, (Professor, The Jane Addams Graduate School of Social Work, University of Illinois)

"... the unmarried mother may well come to feel that her own needs were disregarded, that she was helped, not out of any concern for her, but only because she could supply a baby someone wanted to take from her." CHILD WELFARE: POLICIES AND PRACTICE, Lela B. Costin (1972), McGraw-Hill Book Company, (Professor, The Jane Addams Graduate School of Social Work, University of Illinois)

How did Baby Scoop Mothers fare later in life?

"Existing evidence suggests that the experience of relinquishment renders a woman at high risk of psychological (and possibly physical) disability. Moreover very recent research indicates that actual disability or vulnerability may not diminish even decades after the event.
....Taken overall, the evidence suggests that over half of these women are suffering from severe and disabling grief reactions which are not resolved over the passage of time and which manifest predominantly as depression and psychosomatic illness. "
-- PSYCHOLOGICAL DISABILITY IN WOMEN WHO RELINQUISH A BABY FOR ADOPTION, Dr. John T. Condon (Medical Journal of Australia) Vol. 144 Feb 3, 1986 (Department of Psychiatry, Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Consultant Psychiatrist)

" A grief reaction unique to the relinquishing mother was identified. Although this reaction consists of features characteristic of the normal grief reaction, these features persist and often lead to chronic, unresolved grief. Conclusions: The relinquishing mother is at risk for long-term physical, psychological, and social repercussions.
Although interventions have been proposed, little is known about their effectiveness in preventing or alleviating these repercussions."
-- “Postadoptive Reactions of the Relinquishing Mother: A Review.” By Holli Ann Askren, MSN, CNM, Kathleen C. Bloom, PhD, CNM. In the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug; 28(4)

 

"Relinquishing mothers have more grief symptoms than women who have lost a child to death, including more denial; despair, atypical responses; and disturbances in sleep, appetite, and vigor." Askren, H., & Bloom, K. (1999) Post-adoptive reactions of the relinquishing mother: A review. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug; 28(4)

 

"Results shown in Table 3 demonstrate that mothers relinquishing a child for adoption tend towards more grief symptoms than bereaved parents ... ." ... "Table 3, comparing natural mothers in both open and closed adoptions with bereaved parents, shows that natural mothers suffer more denial, atypical responses, despair, anger, depersonalization, sleep disturbance, somaticizing, physical symptoms, dependency, vigor." Blanton, T.L., & Deschner, J. (1990). Biological mother's grief: The postadoptive experience in open versus confidential adoption. Child Welfare Journal, 69(6),

 

"Bowlby (1980) proposed 4 phases of the grief process. The first phase is characterized by numbing and detachment where a person experiences emotional and psychological shock, which causes a dulling of feelings and cognitive disbelief." , De Simone, M. (1994). Unresolved grief in women who have relinquished an infant for adoption. Doctoral dissertation, New York University School of Social Work, New York, N.Y

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And today?

 

" Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home, to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year, seeking babies for adoption and charging prospective parents enormous fees to process paperwork. The problems surrounding many intercountry adoptions in which children are taken from poor families in undeveloped countries and given to parents in developed countries, have become quite well known, but the Special Rapporteur was alarmed to hear of certain practices within developed countries, including the use of fraud and coercion to persuade single mothers to give up their children.”
–United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003.

 

"Based on what I've learned about the experiences of [mothers] in the United States, I want to suggest that the conventional understanding of adoption should be turned on its head. Almost everybody believes that on some level, [mothers] make a choice to give their babies away. I argue that adoption is rarely about mothers' choices; it is, instead, about the abject choicelessness of some resourceless women."
Rickie Solinger, Beggars and Choosers, 2001.

After 1973. The Supreme Court did not strike down state law prohibiting contraceptive use by married couples until 1965 (Griswold v Connecticut.) It was not until 1972 that the Supremem Court ruled that unmarried people have the right to contraception ( Eisenstadt v. Baird )

There are many resources for you on this site. Among them you will find a variety of academic research on Baby Scoop Mothers.