Educational Media Reviews Online

For those born after 1980 or so, the issues and concerns of this film will be somewhat puzzling since the stigma attached to out-of-wedlock births is not only passé, it’s positively celebrated these days, especially if one is rich and famous. But for generations of women pre-Roe v. Wade whose voices fill this film, the whole idea of reproductive rights was as foreign to them as elastic Kotex belts are to girls today. Fessler’s film focuses specifically on a generation of sexually ignorant women from roughly the late 50s to late 60s who were told that if they really loved their babies, their only option was to relinquish these out-of-wedlock infants upon giving birth [questions of abortion—legal or otherwise—are not the focus of this work]. Images of happy, iconic 50s white suburban families contrast with the anguished birth mothers’ recollections of longing, defeat and regret. Forced into homes for unwed mothers, most were captive until the birth of their babies where they experienced “clinical indifference” from delivery through to signing legal documents, thereby relinquishing all rights to their babies, or so they were told. The official designation of these babies was “abandoned” by their mothers, to be cheerfully sent into homes that would love and care for them. The irony is that it was these young, naïve mothers who were abandoned by a harsh, oppressive system as well as families desperate to conform to rigid social standards at all costs.

Highly recommended as a picture of American social engineering in the mid-20th century as well as a sympathetic look at emerging reproductive rights.