[jdox0776]

I have read about so many moms who were really young who was forced to place and didn't have a choice. How can they force you to do that. I realize times are different now but that seems so awful. If this happened to you did you find your child later?

[JustPeachy]

How can they force you to do that.

I wasn't forced to place, but I do know that if you are still living at home and being supported by your parents, and especially if you are under age, your parents are the ones who are going to be deciding what you are going to do or not do.

If you haven't even completed high school, are not able to get a job or can only get a minimum wage job or part time job, it is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to strike out on your own, much less with a baby to support. If the father is in the picture, it is likely he is not going to be making much at all if he is under age or just starting out working. If you don't have the support of your parents in keeping your baby, and they refuse to let you bring the child home or will throw you out of you don't comply, what can you do? WIC and welfare and other social programs only do so much. And often even if you have financial help it is still hard to move out on your own when you are not ready to do so.

[quantum]

I wasn't forced, but I have realised that knowing them and how they felt about it, made it my only choice really. I was never offered up any options except for a bit of a forced 'I suppose we could take him and raise him as your brother.' No way was that going to happen.
I could tell my dad wasn't really on board with that, and knowing him, he would have held that against me for the rest of my life.

They were happier that I chose adoption.

One thing they did kind of force me into, was the doctor we used and therefore a completely closed adoption. I had no choice. I was a freshman in college, had no job, no place to stay, no car. No inner strength to say no.

[jdox0776]

I can understand that. My grandma told me back in her time if you were a signle young parent they shipped you off to have your baby out of town so no one would see. I am glad I chose adoption, I didn't have any support otherwise, my grandma was the only one who was against it.

[fitnssgrl29]

My birth mother was forced by her mother to give me up for adoption. And what was worse, she was shipped off from Australia to the U.S. to give birth. She had no support whatsoever and ended up on her own after I was born. I did end up making contact with her as well as my birth father this year. She is still having a hard time accepting things that happened 30 years ago especially since my birth father was not given any options in what was to happen to me. Now that we are all together again, she is starting to make peace with the situation

[Scarlet Moon 13]

Originally Posted by jdox0776

I have read about so many moms who were really young who was forced to place and didn't have a choice. How can they force you to do that. I realize times are different now but that seems so awful. If this happened to you did you find your child later?

In 1963 when I got pregnant my mother took one look at me and said you are not keeping it. I was 15. In the 1960s your parents could go to a judge and have the judge sign the papers. No one told you what adoption was or what would happen. You were not a legal adult until the age of 21. You couldn't in most states buy a car, get a phone without your parents co-signing. The doctors would tell your parents what was wrong with you before they would tell you.

Parents had legal control of a woman in many states due to the old blue laws from the early 1900s until the daughter married. Then her husband had control.

Yes it is true that most of those old laws were ignored and were not enforced even in the 1940s/50s/60s. They started removing those laws in the 1960s.

BUT if a parent thought you didn't know what you were doing and needed a parent to care for you they would invoke those laws still in effect.

What parents did when forcing under 21 women to give up babies was very legal.

My neighbor worked in the same place her mother did. She was 19 at the time, and her mother was going to have her fired for being in essence a loose woman, a whore. No one would want her around.

Even in the 1960s divorced women were considered easy. Sounds stupid since the hippie era was just getting started. Free love and freedom of choice but that wasn't for everyone not even for the majority.

Most of the country was still stuck in the 1940s/50s mentality. Good girls didn't and if you got pregnant you were sent away and coerced or force to give up your baby. The fighters were few, the ones who won and keep were few. But they were treated like whores.

One b-mom I met was a WW2 widow at the time she gave up a baby. She had two kids and knew were in-laws would disown them all if she kept the baby.

Somehow the same parents who would die for you if you were injured, who would give their lives to keep you alive, they were the same parents who treated you like you were just a dog in heat and had no feelings for your child. They could give your baby away and expect you to forget and never grieve nor ever love your child.

It was how it was done, it was best for you, forget and pretend it never happened.

lies, all lies..