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As a reunited adoptee/reunited birthmom I know for a fact what this society in 1955 and 1970 viewed single mothers as and how many of us, including my birthmother, were forced to surrender. That was the cause, not blaming the birthmom. I haven't met any birthmoms that didn't first choose to raise their kids. In both my mother's and my case, the fathers of our children failed mightily to step up to the plate.
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This may have been the experience of some bmothers, but many adoptees that have reunited or attempted to reunite have discovered that this was not the experience of their bmother ~ that relinquishment was a choice that bmother/bparents made.
In my own situation, my bparents were married and bmother had affairs. A boy was placed for adoption in 1949, 15 months before I was born and relinquished. The boy was a result of an affair. Her husband forgave her and they moved on with their lives. When she became pregnant, her husband believed he was the Father until the eighth month when she informed him that she had had another affair. He left her and when I was born, they were separated. After seeing me at the hospital, he was convinced I was his child (boy had been mixed race and the man she had thought might have fathered me was a different race ~ I am not mixed race) but did not want me raised in a broken home. He had been raised in a broken home and did not want that life for his child. The records state that bmother was "ambivalent" and they proceeded with the plan of adoption. In 1953, as a single woman as they had obtained a divorce, bmother again gave birth to a mixed race boy. She chose to keep this child. She later married and had two daughters. Based on my conversations with my half-siblings they have many more
wounds from the life they led being
kept , than I have from being relinquished and adopted. Two of them have specifically stated that they wish they had been adopted.
Did some bmothers/bfathers have no choice. Obviously. But many did have a choice and not all bfathers
"failed mightily to step up to the plate". My bmother did not choose to parent her first two children. She used the same adoption agency both times. I'm sure it was not easy for her in 1953 as a single woman to keep a mixed race child but again, that was the choice she made. Unfortunately she basically abandoned the three children she
kept and died at a young age.
Each story is unique and different IMO ~ whether a bparent, an adoptee or an aparent.