“My life has been shaped by the decision two people made over 24 years ago. They decided to adopt a child. They got me, and I got a chance at the kind of life all children deserve.”-Karen Fowler, Reflections on Motherhood The wait was almost overAs I mentioned last week, I’m sure waiting for my …
Click here if you haven’t read Part 1 or Part 2 At some point, the unwed mothers of Canada’s Baby Boom (1945 to the early 1970s) went to a local hospital to deliver their babies. Going to the Hospital Most of the women Anne Petrie interviewed, including some young girls, had no idea what was …
If you haven’t read Part 1, please click here. Thirty years after she was a resident at a home for unwed mothers, Anne Petrie interviewed a number of other women from across Canada. In addition to telling her own story, Anne profiles six other birth mothers in detail and also mentions comments from other interviews …
A couple of years ago, I had a character in one of the novels “go to her aunt’s” when she was young. I’d heard the phrase somewhere along the way and remembered it was a common cover story for young, unmarried women who were pregnant. In my novel, the woman is old, and she’d “gone …
If you haven’t read part 1 of this post, click here. 6. In the years from 1945 to 1973, closed adoption was virtually a given for most unwed young women. Prior to 1945, illegitimate children were usually given to a family member or someone the family knew—either to be raised as their own, or until …
When I was four years old, my mother told me I was adopted. I said something along the lines of “Okay.” And that was, essentially, that. Forty-four years later, I met my birth mother. But even after meeting her, I really didn’t think much about it. I wasn’t angry or upset that I’d been adopted. …
With all the cold and dreariness but neither the excitement of January nor the anticipation of March, February used to be a depressing month for me.
...After deciding I wanted to learn more about what it was like for a woman in Canada’s prairies to be an unwed mother in the late 1940s to the late 1960s, I was pleased to discover our local library had a book written by a woman who grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1968, I …
Since November is Adoption Month, I thought I’d mention a short story I wrote called “Conversations in Baby Blue.” Although it’s fiction, it was actually based on a true story. Years ago, I shared a double hospital room with an unwed teen mother. Since this was back then people stayed in the hospital longer than nowadays, and …
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