Wake Up Little Susie

Rating:
Summary: An insight into how Moms lost their children to adoption
Review: I am a reunited Mom and as I was reading this book I felt the shame begin to lift from my soul. I have been asking myself why I didn't fight harder to keep my baby and after reading "Wake up Little Susie" I see there was a conserted agenda of our government, religious institutions,and those of the adoption industry to separate our children from us in the name of what others deemed was for the best.In truth it was both a punishment for female sexuality and also we were used to provide children for couples unable to procreate. The problem is those same people did not have to live with the wounds of us Moms and our children when they decided that unmarried woman were not worthy to parent their own flesh and blood in the marketting of our children.I am freeing my shame and I am now putting it where it belongs on those that profited off of the hearts of woman and children. Shame on them! And thank you Rickie Solinger for your honest account on what was done to us . Linda Webber

Rating:
Summary: An Accurate Portrayal
Review: This book helped me understand my mother's surrender of her right to raise me. It has helped tremendously in the reunion between my mom and me. I was especially interested to find that giving away the rights to raise one's child was more of a European-American phenomenon than an African-American one. I remember taking a class once with an African-American woman who was trying to research her family tree. I felt a great kinship with her because my own roots were severed, by adoption rather than slavery. How cruel for society and the adoption industry to coerce mothers into making their babies commodities. I would like to believe that practice has stopped, but even though the maternity homes are no longer there, the coercion still is. Reading Solinger's book made me think and do even more research into the adoption industry. I'm so thankful to Solinger for writing it!

Rating:
Summary: An Accurate Portrayal
Review: This book helped me understand my mother's surrender of her right to raise me. It has helped tremendously in the reunion between my mom and me. I was especially interested to find that giving away the rights to raise one's child was more of a European-American phenomenon than an African-American one. I remember taking a class once with an African-American woman who was trying to research her family tree. I felt a great kinship with her because my own roots were severed, by adoption rather than slavery. How cruel for society and the adoption industry to coerce mothers into making their babies commodities. I would like to believe that practice has stopped, but even though the maternity homes are no longer there, the coercion still is. Reading Solinger's book made me think and do even more research into the adoption industry. I'm so thankful to Solinger for writing it!

Rating:
Summary: Social Values and the Decline of Adoption
Review: This book is essential reading for every member of the adoption triad, most particularly adoptive (or prospective adoptive parents)like myself. Many parents who seek to adopt are told literally hundreds of times that if they are lucky enough to adopt, it may take them many years to do so. Sometimes we hear this so often it becomes almost a tired mantra.

What Wake Up Little Suzie offers is the explanation for why adoption was so prevalent in the 1950's and 1960's and why it disappearing in recent times. Ricki Sollinger recounts the many pressures on women pregnant out-of-wedlock to relinquish children for adoption in years gone by. One story that has stayed with me, is the account of a father who rather than admit his daughter was away from home in a home for unwed mothers, instead chose to tell his friends and neighbors she was dead.

Ricki than describes birthmother homes which functioned as mechanisms to pry babies out of the reluctant arms of their mothers and into the hands of the adoption industry. Most of these homes have long since shut down, but they were a fixture of the fifties and the sixties.

One of the more shameful (and sickening) aspects of the whole process was the way that non-white and their children were treated. Unlike white women, they were discouraged from trying to place their children for adoption because they were told that "no one will want your baby". Adoption agencies had little use for children other than healthy white infants.

Finally, Ricki describes how the sexual revolution of the sixties is what ended the pro-adoption climate.

My major criticism of the book is that I think, at times, Ricki offers an incomplete picture. She talks about how the system coerced women into relinquishing, but fails to deal adequately with the fact that even in these times, fewer than 50% of all women pregnant out of wedlock placed children for adoption. Despite, the stigma that existed, more women than not ended up keeping their children. She places too much blame on the adoption industry. It sometimes seems as though the adoption industry created the entire problem. In fact, the adoption industry arose because social mores in white middle class America were very much against single white women keeping babies and raising them. The industry offered an alternative, rather than being part of a conspiracy.

Ricki deals little with the role that religion and moral values played in the whole adoption scenario. Morality and the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock (whether there should have been such shame or not)drove the whole process.

I recommend the book because its scathing and accurate portrayal of how the adoption industry functioned in the 1950's and the 1960's is history that no one involved in adoption should ever be allowed to forget. For adoptive parents like myself, its often painful, but necessary reading.

[e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Social Values and the Decline of Adoption
Review: This book is essential reading for every member of the adoption triad, most particularly adoptive (or prospective adoptive parents)like myself. Many parents who seek to adopt are told literally hundreds of times that if they are lucky enough to adopt, it may take them many years to do so. Sometimes we hear this so often it becomes almost a tired mantra.

What Wake Up Little Suzie offers is the explanation for why adoption was so prevalent in the 1950's and 1960's and why it disappearing in recent times. Ricki Sollinger recounts the many pressures on women pregnant out-of-wedlock to relinquish children for adoption in years gone by. One story that has stayed with me, is the account of a father who rather than admit his daughter was away from home in a home for unwed mothers, instead chose to tell his friends and neighbors she was dead.

Ricki than describes birthmother homes which functioned as mechanisms to pry babies out of the reluctant arms of their mothers and into the hands of the adoption industry. Most of these homes have long since shut down, but they were a fixture of the fifties and the sixties.

One of the more shameful (and sickening) aspects of the whole process was the way that non-white and their children were treated. Unlike white women, they were discouraged from trying to place their children for adoption because they were told that "no one will want your baby". Adoption agencies had little use for children other than healthy white infants.

Finally, Ricki describes how the sexual revolution of the sixties is what ended the pro-adoption climate.

My major criticism of the book is that I think, at times, Ricki offers an incomplete picture. She talks about how the system coerced women into relinquishing, but fails to deal adequately with the fact that even in these times, fewer than 50% of all women pregnant out of wedlock placed children for adoption. Despite, the stigma that existed, more women than not ended up keeping their children. She places too much blame on the adoption industry. It sometimes seems as though the adoption industry created the entire problem. In fact, the adoption industry arose because social mores in white middle class America were very much against single white women keeping babies and raising them. The industry offered an alternative, rather than being part of a conspiracy.

Ricki deals little with the role that religion and moral values played in the whole adoption scenario. Morality and the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock (whether there should have been such shame or not)drove the whole process.

I recommend the book because its scathing and accurate portrayal of how the adoption industry functioned in the 1950's and the 1960's is history that no one involved in adoption should ever be allowed to forget. For adoptive parents like myself, its often painful, but necessary reading.

[e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Stunningly accurate account of the unwed mother experience
Review: When I first read Ricki Solinger's book I could not believe that she had hit upon the same phenomenon as I had discovered in my doctoral research. I found her work thorough, scholarly yet biting. In no way is it restricted to those women who lost their babies to the adoption industry, but is an insightful view into the repressed '60s which many like to think of as "swinging' and sexually free. Read Solinger's work along with Wini Brienes' "Young, White and Miserable" and Susan Douglas's "Where the Girls Are" and you will get an accurate picture of what the '50s and'60s' were *really* like. I know - 'cause I was well and truly there.