"Other [maternity] homes still emphasize the learning
of household skills and child care; a generation or so ago
these lessons together with moral admonitions constituted
the entire program, because all unwed mothers kept their babies.
"Counseling the Unwed Mothers" by Helen E. Terkelsen
copyright 1964 p. 102
"With the growing concern of social agencies ... Of
increasing interest is the question as to whether in being
separated from the mother, the child is not deprived of something
that society can not replace even with the best care it can
provide, and whether this most important consideration may
not outweigh all others." Illegitimacy As a Child-Welfare
Problem (Part 1, p. 56), Emma Lundberg and Katharine Lenroot,
copyright, 1920.
[Question:] "'Would it be better for mother and child
if the baby were given away (adopted)?'
[Answer:] 'Not in most cases. Motherhood, and the love and
care of the baby, strengthens the character of every girl
who has the mentality to grasp it. As to the child: psychologists
and social workers have learned that no material advantage
can make up for the loss of its own mother. Better a poor
home, with mother love, they say, than an adopted home in
luxury. The public conscience is gradually coming to demand
an equal chance for the child born out of wedlock'."
from FLORENCE CRITTENTON HOME BROCHURE (Washington, D.C.)(1942-1956?)
"The child who is placed with adoptive parents at or
soon after birth misses the mutual and deeply satisfying mother
and child relationship. The roots of which lie deep in the
area of personality where the psychological and physiological
are merged. Both for the child and the natural mother, that
period is part of the biological sequence, and it is to be
doubted whether the relationship of the child to it's post
partum mother, in its subtler effects, can be replaced by
even the best of substitute mothers. But those subtle effects
lie so deeply buried in the personality that, in the light
of our present knowledge, we cannot evaluate them."
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ADOPTED CHILD, Clothier. F. MD. 1943
"THE DEPRIVATION OF A MOTHER'S CARE - Separation from
the mother at a very early age is a common experience among
children born out of wedlock. . . Often separation occurs
when it might have been prevented, and when it is contrary
to the best interests of the child and the mother."
ILLEGITIMACY AS A CHILD-WELFARE PROBLEM, PARTS 1 AND 2, U.S.
Department of Labor, Children's Bureau by Emma Lundberg &
Katharine Lenroot, (reprinted 1974), copyright 1920.
