The Baby Scoop Era Quotes

“As the profession of social work evolved, it became a common practice to describe unmarried mothers in psychiatric terms. The unmarried mother was no longer viewed as having “bad blood,” but instead as a criminal needing correction or as a “girl” needing “a cure” for her neurosis. In other words, the mother as sick, but her soon-to-be-born baby was not. Once unmarried mothers were no longer viewed as having genetic deficiencies - the “bad blood” that could be passed on to their children - their babies became highly adoptable. Hastings Hornell Hart, an ordained pastor with a national reputation in penology and prison reform, described the standard procedure for admitting an unmarried mother to a maternity home and referring to her and the home’s “inmates” as “homeless and wayward white girls and women” who came from any part of the United States, who required physical examinations to detect the presence of venereal disease, who could be used to do the chores and thus save money for the institution, which was maintained  for the care of “inmates” by public monies from the District Board of Charities (Hart, 1924).”
― Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender

“…for decades we have had in place a welfare system that has deliberately subsidized out of wedlock births. The program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) which began in the 1930s to help ‘widows and orphans,’ was transmuted over the decades into a vast government system that in effect has paid poor, unmarried women to have children. Whatever its good intentions, it ranks among the most destructive social initiatives ever.”
― Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender

“During the mid to late twentieth century (1940s to 1980s), it was common practice for babies of unwed mothers to be adopted by married couples. Many of the infants were taken from their mothers at childbirth as a result of extreme pressure and coercion that they experienced from family, social workers and hospital staff…”
― Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender

“The subject of unmarried mothers was even addressed by the mainstream advice columnist Ann Landers (1961) who believe that “single girls who hang on to their babies” displayed a “sick kind of love” and “an unwholesome blend of self-pity mixed with self-destruction and a touch of martyrdom.”
― Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender

“[T]here is no question about society’s instinctive response to her plight. It is simply to ostracize her…she will probably be expelled from school…such swift action is not meted out to the unmarried school boy father…Says former U.S. Commissioner of Education, Lawrence Derthick, ‘Many school systems …are prevented by law from providing teachers…or making homebound programs available from public funds for unwed mothers…there is no way a girl can earn credits for any scholastic work she does during pregnancy…there is no way by which she can conceal the fact that the earning was done in a maternity home…”
― Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender