Waiting to Forget [Hardcover]

Margaret Moorman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1996

In 1964, the author, then aged 15, gave birth to a child which she had to give up for adoption. Not until her second pregnancy 25 years later did she realize the toll her experience had taken. In this book she looks back at her loss and explores the pain she had tried to ignore.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Margaret Moorman was 16 she became pregnant, endured the stigma of teenage pregnancy, and was essentially forced by her parents and society into first a cover-up and then the giving up of her son for adoption. She was told to get over it and forget. As Moorman reveals in this stark memoir, forgetting was not possible. At age 40, with a daughter whom she could not bear to be separated from without anxiety, she confronted the past, began searching for her son, and wrote this searing condemnation of the social prejudice that had trapped her as a 16-year-old. She writes with angry clarity of the strangling embrace of cultural mores, and of the "climates of approval or disapproval" that remove the possibility of choice and create feelings of guilt.

From Publishers Weekly

Moorman (My Sister's Keeper) has written a wrenching and moving account of her teenage pregnancy and her decision to give up her newborn son for adoption. A 15-year-old high-school student in Arlington, Va., she was ignorant of birth control in 1964 when she became pregnant by her boyfriend. He promised to marry her but instead joined the Navy, a move that echoed other losses: her father's unexpected death from a heart attack in 1963 and her sister's repeated hospitalizations for manic-depressive illness. The disapproval of doctors and her moody, withdrawn mother imparted shame and humiliation and induced her to give away her infant son in a "closed" adoption (the birth records were sealed). Beset by guilt, sorrow and debilitating depression, she subsequently underwent years of psychotherapy. In 1989, she and her second husband had a daughter named Laura. Moorman writes affectingly of being pregnant at 40 and of her irrational terror of letting Laura out of her sight, a fear she traced to unresolved longing for her first, unknown child. After years spent tracking the by-now grown man down, she finally located him in 1995. His response?that he did not want to see her, at least for the time being?makes for a bittersweet finale. First serial to Washington Post Magazine; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 214 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1St Edition edition (August 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393039676
• ISBN-13: 978-0393039672
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,412,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Healing, Food for thought in today's society, May 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Waiting to Forget: A Motherhood Lost and Found (Paperback)

As a newly reunited birthmother, this book was recommended to me by my birth son. I cannot say how many tears I shed as I read Margaret Moorman's story. It could easily have been my own. How many poignant memoirs like this will it take to bring us all out of the closet? Moorman's emotions run the gamut of a typical birthmother in that era. As it was described to me, adoption then was totally 'barbaric'. Proof of this is the now generation of adoptees searching for their roots. Wonderful book and definitely recommended reading for anyone in the 'adoption triad'.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Forgetting to remember, June 2, 2000

By 

leslie powell (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waiting to Forget (Hardcover)

Ms. Moorman book is a brave one and I admire her for facing her pain and her past and how it affects her present. Her story is an American adoption story that shows we are still in the dark ages, full of wrenching heartache and misguided notions. The proof comes from Ms. Moorman's son who is described as "nice" but so worried about hurting his adoptive mother that he cannot agree to meet his birth mother at the age of 30! Think about that; here is a man who is not free and doesn't know he isn't free. Just as his birth mother didn't know the affects of losing him. This is deeply disturbing and goes to the heart of our problems with adoption...who owns this child? Is he, as an adult, still so worried about appearing ungrateful to his adoptive parents that he cannot see the mother who gave him life, and by doing so gave up so much of her own life. What message is he getting from his adoptive parents and the soicety at large that makes him act not in his own best interest? One message must be: there can only be one mother and it is the "good" mother and she must be the adoptive mother. Adoption makes these two mothers rivals. That this "boy" must turn his back on the mother who gave him life and also offers him love proves the failure of adoption. If we find it necessay to deny love and healing we are in the dark, no matter how "rational" the reason, no matter how much we tell ourselves we are right. Let's hope the story does not really end here. Let's hope we all wake up and face how adoption, as we practice it, shatters what we say we hold so dear: freedom and family and love.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent and mind opening, January 20, 2003

By 

michigan jean "jeanps" (MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waiting to Forget (Hardcover)

First, let me say I have no hidden agenda in reviewing this book. I am not adopted, have not adopted nor am I a birth mother. I'm simply someone who likes to read non fiction. I also had some interest in reading this as one of my best friends adopted a baby 19 years ago and that child has reunited with her birthmother recently with seemingly little problems for all involved. I also had worked in a psychiatric hospital in the 80's and found that a disproportionate number of juveniles on the wards were adopted and I've always wondered why exactly that was.

This book answered some questions about that and opened my eyes to other things as well. By the end of the book, I was questioning who really benefits from adoption besides the adoptive parents. While I hate to see the "explosion" of teens having kids these days, I don't know anymore if it's always such a bad thing that they are keeping their kids. I've always felt that life must start out an uphill battle for adoptees knowing that they were rejected by their natural parents (often in all good intentions.) I also found it interesting that when she went to meetings with adoptees she saw that they had no idea how much pain the birth parents went through and continued to go through.

I liked Margaret's writing style, I like that she did not expose her son. I'm glad things turned out like they did for her. What a terrible decision she was faced with in 1965. (keep in mind, this was before Roe vs. Wade).