White Unwed Mother: The Adoption Mandate in Postwar Canada Valerie Andrews A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN GENDER, FEMINIST AND WOMEN’S STUDIES (GFWS) TORONTO, ONTARIO March, 2017 © Valerie Andrews, 2017 ii ABSTRACT The white adoption mandate was 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 white unmarried mothers were systematically and often violently separated from their babies by means of adoption in the hundreds of thousands in Canada. These factors, together with urbanization, eugenics, the profession of social work, and the introduction of baby formula; all within the context of two World Wars, collided as a kind of perfect storm to create an unprecedented locus in history where approximately 300,000 unmarried mothers in Canada were systematically separated from their babies at birth for adoption in an attempt to rehabilitate them for normative womanhood. iii DEDICATION For my son, Christopher (1970-2008) “Take me outside I want to feel the rain on my face,” he said, so we went outside and sat together holding hands and felt the light, warm Vancouver rain fall on our faces. We talked not about our lost past, but our lost future… I remember those days my Beloved When we danced in the teardrops of the Goddess And the only Angels I have ever seen Slid down your cheeks from the windows of your soul And the rain, the gentle rain so sweet from Heaven Fell down over the temples of our souls And we tasted the salt of Her ocean Her rain washed away our pain Pete Bernard iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………………………………….………...ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...iii Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………..…..iv List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………...v List of Illustrations……….……………………………..…………………………………..…….vi List of Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………….vii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One The Construction of the Characterization and Incarceration of the Fallen………………………16 Section I – Forbidding Options-The Unmarried Mother in Nineteenth Century Canada..19 Section II –The Magdalen, Rescue, Salvationist and Maternity Home Movement……...28 Chapter Two Characterizations of the Unmarried Mother in the 20th Century…………………..….………....48 Chapter Three Social Work and Sociological Theories………………………..………………………….…….79 Section I – The Profession of Social Work……………………………………………..81 Section II – The Impact of Sociological Theories on the Adoption Mandate…………...95 Chapter Four Maternity Homes in Canada……………………………………………….….………..…..…. 115 Chapter Five The Postwar Mother Imperative…………………………………………………………..…....158 Section I – Postwar Mother Imperative – A Maternalistic Ideology for Whites Only Please......................................................................................................................159 Section II – Race and Gender and the Adoption Mandate……………………………..163 Section III – The Phenomenon of Mass Surrender……………………………………..173 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...192 References……………………………………………………………………………………...202 Appendices Appendix A – Rules & Regulations for the Industrial House of Refuge Toronto (Magdalen Laundry)…………………………………………………………………....251 Appendix B – Social Diagnosis, Mary Richmond, The Unmarried Mother, 1917….....253 Appendix C – Correspondence from Betty Graham to Victoria Leach………………..261 Appendix D – Maternity Homes in Canada- List and Images…………………………263 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Daily Schedule of Maternity Home circa 1960s…………………………134 Table 2: Number of Adoptions from Unmarried Mothers, 1942-1971 Province of Ontario……………………………………………………………….. 179 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration Page 1. Correspondence, Sandfield MacDonald Collection 1812-1872………………………….16 2. Found Drowned. Oil on Canvas. Watts, George Frederick (1867)………………………18 3. In the Laundry’s Steam Mangle. Photograph. Ritchie, T. (2013)………………………..28 4. Feeble Minded Woman: Inmate of a Maternity Hospital. Report Upon the Care of the Feeble- Minded in Ontario, 1908……………………………………………………50 5. Unwed Mothers, Henry Gallus, 1962, Book Cover………………………………….…..67 6. With Case Worker. Photograph. Clark, E. (1951). Life Magazine………………………81 7. Humewood House, Residents Doing Laundry, Toronto, circa 1950s. ACCA…….……118 8. Armagh Maternity Home, Series of Photographs of Maternity Home Residents, PA….136 9. Babies fill a nursery at Humewood House in an archival photo from the shelter's collection. Toronto Star…………………………………………………………………….144 10. Faith Haven Outgrows Itself. Windsor, Ontario, Salvation Army. War Cry…………..147 11. Salvation Army Officers Care Lovingly for the Infants of Unmarried Mothers, SAA..159 12. An ever increasing ‘crop’ of babies born to unwed mothers in Winnipeg is…………..186 creating a backlog of babies who have nowhere to go. Winnipeg Free Press vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACCA Anglican Church of Canada Archives ARCAT Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto ARENA Adoption Resource Exchange of North America ASCA Australian Senate Committee Report CAS Children’s Aid Society CCAS Catholic Children’s Aid Society CTA City of Toronto Archives HSP Historical Society of Philadelphia LAC Library and Archives Canada OCAS Ontario Children’s Aid Society Association PANB Provincial Archives of New Brunswick PA Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives SAA Salvation Army Archives SGS Sisters of the Good Shepherd SNOOLC A Short Notice on the Origin and Objective of the Sisters of the Lady of Charity Better Known as the Sisters of the Good Shepherd UCMF United Church Maternity Facilities UCCA United Church of Canada Archives WHO World Health Organization YWCA Young Women’s Christian Association 1 White Unwed Mother: The Adoption Mandate in Postwar Canada Introduction Adoption practice works on the premise that in order to ‘save’ the child - you must first destroy its mother (Wellfare, 1997). While feminist research seeks to foreground subjugated knowledge and support social justice on issues that resound in the lives of women, only recently have contemporary feminists attempted to locate adoption within feminism. Dominant ideology in mainstream Canadian society and feminist scholarship typically ascribe agency to white unmarried mothers who surrendered babies for adoption post WWII and, as I will argue, obscure the existence of an adoption mandate (Shawyer, 1979; Solinger 1992; Kunzel, 1993; Fessler, 2006; Chambers 2007; Pietsch, 2012) and the subsequent phenomenon of mass infant adoption.1 The postwar white adoption mandate might be described 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 white unmarried mothers were systematically and often violently separated from their babies by means of adoption in the hundreds of thousands in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada and the United States. In Canada alone, approximately 300,000 unmarried mothers were impacted by the mandate from 1 The term “birthmother” will not be used in this work, except as a search tool or as revealed through research since many mothers of adoption loss reject adoption industry terminology as marginalizing, demeaning, and dismissive of their lived experience as mothers. Other terms such as “fallen woman”, “unmarried mother”, “unwed mother”, ”bastard”, “illegitimate”, “negro”, “baby-farmer”, may be used in historical context or as quoted from primary sources. The term “home” as a reference to maternity facilities is used to reflect the historical name used during the period. It is acknowledged that many mothers of the mandate reject the term “home” for the quasi-incarceral institutions where unmarried mothers resided. 2 1940 to 19702. The mandate was also influenced by urbanization, eugenics, social work, medical advances, and the introduction of baby formula; all within the context of two World Wars. These these factors came together as a kind of “perfect storm” to create an unprecedented locus in history wherein the majority of white unmarried mothers in Canada were routinely and systematically separated from their babies at birth for adoption. Was there an adoption mandate for white unmarried mothers in postwar Canada which resulted in the phenomenon of mass infant adoption? This research aims to provide evidence of the mandate in Canada, to demonstrate that mass infant adoption occurred as a result, and to explore the ways in which adoption can operate or effectively function as a form of violence against women and the maternal body (Shawyer, 1979; Davis, 1998; Roberts, 2002). This work is original in scope. Without this research, the adoption mandate in Canada and related phenomenon of mass surrender remain hidden, a secreted knowledge that continues to subjugate the women impacted, insofar as they are too frequently portrayed as agents who actively relinquished, rather than surrendered their children to adoption. This research examines the history and challenges the ways in which unmarried mothers have been constructed within adoption as pathological subjects. The postwar institution of adoption, its policies and practices which led to the production of contemporary adoption culture are uncovered and questioned in order to: further critical adoption studies, promote feminist theory and debate about adoption in Western contexts, contribute to the feminist project of uncovering subjugated knowledges, value the lived experiences of women, support social justice, and ultimately, lead to political reform in adoption policy and practice. 2 See Chapter 5 for statistical review 3 While there is much work to be done surrounding race and the unmarried mother in Canada, the focus of this work is the white unmarried mother because it uncovers a specific Canadian history yet to be told. This essentially limits the scope of the research. The rationale behind a concentration on whiteness emerges through a critical exploration of contrasting institutional prescriptions for, and characterizations of, Black unmarried mothers and Indigenous women. How “race-specific meanings” are translated and become attached to the breaching of social norms governing sexuality, maternity and motherhood assists in uncovering the experience of the white unmarried mother (Solinger, 1992:18). Race was a salient factor in the postwar adoption mandate since, race became the most accurate predictor of family and societal responses to out-of-wedlock pregnancy (Solinger: 1992:18). Theories surrounding racialized mothers portrayed unmarried mothers of colour as undeserving of reform and rehabilitation due to their essential nature of ‘Blackness’, or, as described by Solinger, “alleged biological condition of Black womanhood” (Solinger 1992:44), and thus their offspring were deemed unadoptable. The Indigenous mother in Canada, whether wed or unwed, was considered illegitimate. Over 20,000 Indigenous mothers lost their children to adoption into non-Indigenous homes during the Sixties Scoop due to the Indian Act and Canada’s cultural genocide assimilation policies.3 Unlike their counterparts, white middle-class unmarried mothers retained intrinsic social value by virtue of their whiteness. During the immediate postwar period when “good” mothers were constructed as white and married, the white unmarried mother was treated as a candidate for rehabilitation to the norms of legitimate marriage and normative white motherhood through adoption separation, and, by extension, her child was effectively rendered a commodity. 3 See Chapter 5