Price: $34.95
Page Count: 252
Publication Date: November 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77258-172-0
In postwar Canada, having a child out-of-wedlock invariably meant being subject to the adoption mandate. Andrews describes the mandate as a process of interrelated institutional power systems which, together with socio-cultural norms, ideals of gender heteronormativity, and emerging sociological and psychoanalytic theories, created historically unique conditions in the post WWII decades wherein the white unmarried mother was systematically separated from her baby by means of adoption. This volume uncovers and substantiates evidence of the mandate, ultimately finding that at least 350,000 unmarried mothers in Canada were impacted.
White Unwed Mother lays bare the systematic disempowerment of women inside Canada’s homes for unmarried mothers. Andrews shows how shame, secrecy, social work practice, and wider social attitudes, combined with the daily routines and physical environment of the maternity home, enfolded young women and pushed them to surrender their children in service of the postwar adoption mandate. This is an important book based on deep research and demonstrating keen theoretical insight. It must inform how Canadians and our leaders grapple with our shameful history of Forced Adoption.
— Karen Balcom, Associate Professor of History, McMaster University. Author of The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada, 1930-1972.
Valerie Andrews’s meticulous work meets a long-standing need—to capture the story of widespread, coerced separation of white unmarried women from their children in Canada. Andrews shows how the intersection of cultural imperatives, institutional strategies, and the multiple vulnerabilities of young white women built and sustained a system of brutal family separation for decades in the middle of the twentieth century.
— Rickie Solinger is the author of Pregnancy and Power: A History of Reproductive Politics in the United States (2005, 2019) and co-author of Reproductive Justice: An Introduction (2017).
White Unwed Mother makes a unique and important contribution to the history of the adoption mandate in Canada. By including the voices of women impacted by forced adoption, and amassing unprecedented evidence about daily practices in maternity homes and the numbers of children taken, Andrews proves unequivocally that women did not surrender children by choice. This book is required reading for anyone interested in the history of adoption and theories and practice of maternity.
— Lori Chambers, Chair, Women’s Studies, Lakehead University. Author of Misconceptions: Unmarried Motherhood and the Ontario Children of Unmarried Parents Act, 1921-1969, and A Legal History of Adoption in Ontario, 1921-2015.
White Unwed Mother is a tour de force of scholarship that uncovers a previously hidden social history that impacted hundreds of thousands of innocent girls, women, and children in Canada. A foundational and groundbreaking book for critical adoption studies in Canada.
— Paul J. Redmond, Chair, Coalition of Mother and Baby Home Survivors, Ireland. Author, The Adoption Machine: The Dark History of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes.
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter One
The Construction of the Characterization and Incarceration of the Fallen
Section I. Forbidding Options: The Unmarried Mother in Nineteenth-Century Canada
Section II. The Magdalen, Rescue, Salvationist, and Maternity Home Movement
Chapter Two
Characterizations of the Unmarried Mother in the Twentieth Century
Chapter Three
The Profession of Social Work and the Influence of Sociological Theories
Section I. The Profession of Social Work
Section II. The Impact of Sociological Theories on the Adoption Mandate
Chapter Four
Maternity Homes in Canada
Chapter Five
Maternalism, The Postwar Mother Imperative, and the Phenomenon of Mass Surrender
Section I. Postwar Mother Imperative: A Maternalistic Ideology for Whites
Only Please
Section II. Race and the Adoption Mandate
Section III. The Phenomenon of Mass Surrender
Conclusion
Works Cited
Appendices
Appendix A. Rules and Regulations for the Industrial House of Refuge/Toronto
Magdalen Laundry
Appendix B. Social Diagnosis, Mary Richmond, The Unmarried Mother, 1917
Appendix C. Correspondence from Betty Graham to Victoria Leach
Appendix D. Maternity Homes in Canada: List and Images
Valerie Andrews is a PhD student in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies at York University in Toronto. Valerie is an adoption activist and executive director of Origins Canada: Supporting those Separated by Adoption. Her main interest of research is critical adoption studies with an emphasis on adoption culture and the surrendering mother. Some of Valerie’s works include The Language of Adoption, Crimes Against the Unmarried Mother, Sales and Marketing in Modern Domestic Adoption, #Flip the Script on Teen Mothers, Motherhood Denied: Canada’s Maternity Homes, and Scripting/Disrupting “Birthmother” Identities.
