Booth Girls

This looks interesting to me (I have not read this recently published book). My paternal grandmother gave birth as an unwed mother in a San Diego home in 1935. It was called the Door of Hope. After her release with my father some months after his birth, she tried to seek refuge with her cousin who lived nearby. I am guessing it didn’t go well. My grandmother returned to the Salvation Army home seeking employment and was accepted. She traveled by train to El Paso TX with my dad in tow to another home for unwed mothers where she became a helper. When I discovered a cousin, thanks to 23 and Me, with the same grandmother, she expressed surprise the Salvation Army “owned” my dad at the time of his adoption. The family story was a nice couple took my dad because my grandmother could not financially support him. I will always believe that the Salvation Army coerced my grandmother into relinquishing him. Thanks to breadcrumbs she left for us in her photo albums retained by her daughter, the next youngest child after my dad, I was able to identify who my paternal grandfather was.

About the book shown above –

In 1961, my mother delivered her first daughter, my half-sister, at the Salvation Army Booth Memorial Hospital in St. Paul. Booth was a home for “unwed mothers” and so, like most of the other young women in residence, my mother surrendered her baby for adoption. She kept the whole experience a secret until 1994, when my sister found my mother. After my mother died in 2009, I set out to learn more about her experiences as Booth girl in hopes of understanding my own as an adoptive mother. Based on oral history interviews, archival research, family history, and memoir, Booth Girls is a story about mothering through the losses and gains of adoption.

~ Kim Heikkila, author

There is an informative video posted, “Mother’s Day” watchable at Vimeo, available at Heikkila’s website (because of it’s privacy settings I cannot embed it her but I do recommend watching it !!).

The Baby Saver

I don’t know, I have conflicting feelings about this woman (she signs her own self as The Baby Saver on a post I saw) and her organization, Project Cuddle. On the one hand, she has found her calling and who can argue with saving a baby in danger of being abandoned ? On the other hand, it is a method of being something like an adoption agency, who doesn’t identify themselves as such, who doesn’t sell babies but seeks donations to fund their organization.

They have Rescue Families not adoptive parents. Their official line is this – We are not an adoption agency or facilitator. We charge nothing to the girls who come to us seeking assistance nor to our vetted “Rescue Families”. We are a non-profit charity. Our only goal is to help each girl or woman make safe, legal decisions regarding their pregnancy and subsequent baby.

They don’t pick babies up from dumpsters. Project Cuddle says – We help frightened girls and women find safe and legal alternatives for their baby’s future, so that abandonment need never happen. A girl or woman will never have to leave a baby in a dumpster, at a church, lying in some back alley, or anywhere else for that matter.

In day’s of yore, they might have been referred to as a home for unwed mothers, much like the Door of Hope that my paternal grandmother went to in Ocean Beach CA – after she discovered she was pregnant and that her boyfriend was actually married to someone else.

Child abandonment appears in many different forms. It can apply to a minor who is left without appropriate supervision for an extended period of time. That is the kind of situation that brings Child Welfare Agencies and the courts into the picture. Project Cuddle’s mission is officially preventing baby abandonment by supporting an unwed pregnant woman with prenatal care, maternity clothes, hospital delivery and a family waiting to adopt her baby.

They remind me a bit of the old Salvation Army (that is where my paternal grandmother went for help). Project Cuddle says – after the mother has delivered, Project Cuddle continues to assist her in establishing a plan for her future. We never judge any girl or woman that calls us for help.

They do claim NOT to be promoting surrender or adoption – The decision to give her baby up for adoption is entirely left to the birthmother. This can be as quick as two days or take as long as twenty years. Hmmm, really ? 20 years. Isn’t the baby a legal adult by that time ? What mother cuts ties with a baby she has been involved with that long ? Never mind, I’m certain it happens. Parents and children do become estranged in some families. I wonder just how non-coercive Project Cuddle is about moving a baby into an adoptive family. They do say – the more open a rescue family is towards things such as sex, ethnicity and drug exposure – the more quickly they may be matched with a birthmother choosing surrender.

I don’t know. I continue feel squeamish about this whole “project” – while at the same time recognizing there is a need for mothers and their babies to have the support when they need it. When society doesn’t deliver that support, individuals with a savior complex often do step in. You can learn more about Project Cuddle at their website. However, from a comment thread I have read – all is not 100% as it seems. The terminology is exploitative and deceiving and there is every indication that “counselors” do coerce the mother into surrender, regardless of how much they try to say otherwise (this comes from some real life experiences that are now being openly shared).

Falsified Birth Certificates

This was the only birth certificate my dad knew as the original. Yet another one was created when he was 8 years old when his adoptive mother re-married following a divorce.

Neither of the two certificates were “true” as to who my dad was born to. The attending physician’s location was actually a clue but I didn’t know that until I received some additional information from the Salvation Army through whom he was adopted in El Paso Texas.

My dad’s name at birth was Arthur Martin Hempstead. He was given his mother’s surname as she was unwed. I believe his father, a married man, Danish immigrant and not yet a citizen never even knew of my dad’s existence. More’s the pity – they would have gone fishing together.

We did always know he had been born in San Diego. Ocean Beach would have been more accurate. He was born at the Door of Hope home for unwed mothers on Voltaire walking distance from the ocean’s shore.

This falsifying the birth certificate to make it appear that an adoptee was born to someone they were not born to was common in the 1930s when each of my parents were adopted. Actually, to my knowledge it is still common practice – though reform activists would desire that to change.

When a child is adopted, their origins are falsified, they are given a new name and the identity of their parents becomes the names of the couple who adopted them.

Can you imagine being forced to live a lie all your life ?

Andy Hardy’s Dilemma

Andy Hardy’s Dilemma was a 1940 short from the Community Chest (precursor to the United Way) in which Andy and his father explore the idea of charitable giving.

In the film, the narrator specifically discussed a Salvation Army Home for Women, stating that the hospital:
“. . . is happy to indulge any mother who wishes to be known by her first name only and once baby and mother are both healthy, the organization will find the mother a job where she can keep her infant nearby with the belief that with her own child growing up beside her, a girl isn’t going to make the same mistake again . . . A fundamental principle here is that, after the baby is born and started in life, and after the mother is well and normal, every effort is made to find work so she can keep her baby. You see, this magnificent principle of tolerance and understanding is based on her own child growing up beside her. She is unlikely to make the same mistake again . . . and oh, I didn’t say anything about the babies’ fathers, did I? And no, I’m not going to.”

The plot is that Andy wants to buy a new car. So he goes into the judge’s home office where his father is about to write a $200 check to charity. Andy drives four cars with his dad as the passenger. They make four stops, one with each of the cars – the last stop is at a “woman’s home”.

Mickey Rooney made a whole series of Andy Hardy romantic movies, some with Judy Garland.

I was attracted to this quote because my dad was born in a Salvation Army home for unwed mothers called Door of Hope in Ocean Beach California in 1935. My grandmother left there some weeks later with her son. She then applied for employment with the Salvation Army and was transferred to El Paso Texas, where eventually my dad was adopted by my Granny primarily (she went through one husband and then ended up with my Granddaddy).

A persistent and determined woman, my Granny never abandoned her adopted sons, even during her most difficult times as a single mother between marriages.

The Grandparent Factor

A topic not always discussed in adoption issue considerations is the lack of support from potential grandparents when a woman finds herself pregnant. They are often key to why an adoption is taking place.

Regardless of the age of the mother, the grandparents often play a huge role in a decision to surrender the child. My own mother, an adoptee herself, encouraged my sister to surrender her daughter.

Where is the family that could have stepped in ? Who else is giving up this child ? In reality, every one related to a child given up for adoption has lost an opportunity to have a relationship with that child. I lost the opportunity to have relationships with all 4 of my original grandparents and many aunts and uncles.

“I don’t want this child – get rid of it !!”, could be what my maternal grandmother’s own father said to her as he sent my married grandmother far away to have my mom. I doubt he intended for my grandmother to bring her back to Memphis Tennessee.

My paternal grandmother left the Door of Hope, a Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers in Ocean Beach California to go to her cousin’s home for support. Obviously, that support was not forthcoming because my grandmother went back to the Salvation Army seeking employment, was accepted and transferred to El Paso Texas – which is how my dad ended up there and could be adopted. Being in El Paso was crucial to his meeting my mom and to my conception and birth.

In my family’s case, both of my original grandmothers had lost her own mothers at young ages. The lack of a nurturing, supportive older female probably played a huge role in their losing their first born children. It appears that they didn’t have support from their fathers either.