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The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the DecadesBefore Roe v. Wade | 
| Author: Ann Fessler
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $5.64
You Save: $9.36 (62%)
New (41) Used (21) from $5.58
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 29040
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0143038974
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.8298
EAN: 9780143038979
ASIN: 0143038974
Publication Date: June 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Has remainder mark and/or slight shelf wear- never read- shipped in bubble wrap
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Product Description
In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Adoption August 25, 2008
This is an important contribution not only for the stories of mothers who reliquished their children for adoption but for the analysis of the culture of the time between 1930 and the early 70s. The shift from church groups who helped mother and child stay together to the more "professional" social worker who separated mother and child is well documented. The rationale created by the "professionals" is scary. This book is a must read for all those mothers who relinquished thier children and for their families and friends.
I was one of those mothers who got caught in this in the late 50s and after living a life of secrets and shame, this book offers an alternate insight into what had happened.
Now, more than ever, read this book! June 12, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
For whatever reason, Amazon has not incorporated the reviews from the hardcover edition of this book onto the release of the paperback, which gives me the opportunity to again encourage everyone to READ THIS BOOK, especially now, when many schools are prohibitted from, and many parents refuse to, teach basic sex education. And the Supreme Court is hanging by a thread contingent on the next Presidential election. This reviewer is shocked, chagrinned, and embarassed by generations of females behind me, like Elisabeth Hasselbeck on *The View,* who totally "don't get" the ramifications. This could be where Yogi Berra says: "it's Deja Vu all over again!"
Between the end of World War II in 1945 and the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, many unwed girls and women were forced by society to "go away" during unplanned pregnancies - < to "hide" the physical evidence of their perceived moral turpitude, while the fathers, blameless and shameless, were free to roam about their usual lives and wild oat sowing> - and surrender the baby to "good homes" (2 parent households.) Now, adding insult to past psychological injuries, the Men in power continue to refuse to allow adequate access to birth and adoption records such that the members of the "adoption triad" (birth parents, adoptive parents and adoptee) can't find each other. Thus is created a large segment of the "Baby Boom" generation without medical/genetic history.
Ann Fessler found her history and has written an excellent, empathetic, anecdotal and well-researched history of her mother and other mothers who "gave up" their babies and the confluence of forces in the age of Ozzie and Harriet, McCarthy, and beyond. As this reviewer has cautioned in other reviews, a lot of younger women take for granted the great strides made in the brief period between the 1960's and now. This book and In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution will remind those of us who lived through this period of the progress we've made - and teach the younger generations that they must be eternally vigilant, lest those rights be taken away. Rosie the Riveter, paragon of "We Can Do It!" womanhood in the 1940s, was shuffled off to June Cleaver's kitchen in the 1950s. As Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
/TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer
my story May 31, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I bought this book to validate the feelings I experienced surrendering my daughter 37 years ago - although it took my breath away reconnecting with the pain, I also found I wasn't alone. A wonderful complimentary tool to those seeking therapy to cope with the loss of a child through adoption.
The Girls Who Went Away March 3, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Every heart rending story is told by a birth mother who was made to feel ashamed and guilty about her pregnancy before marriage. Most of these young women were coerced into giving their babies up for adoption. These are eye-opening accounts of young women abandoned by their families, lovers and the social systems of the time.
 Not really about Roe v Wade - but good to read February 5, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book is not about Roe v. Wade but is really about the lack of education on how our bodies work, how to handle your own urges and those of your partners, how to prevent pregnancy and the transmission of disease. It was good to read these interviews and to know that many of these women are now healing. Isn't it also appalling that many of the women interviewed had no explanation of what to expect during labor and delivery even when they were in a home for un-wed mothers with 'professionals'. I know that many families still do not talk about 'it' at all. We can have sex education in schools, access to birth control and understanding of how to postpone sex, avoid feeling pressured into sex and to let young people know that there will always be someone to talk to. We, our society, can help prevent unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. I felt that more of the book could have addressed what can be done now.
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