Rickie Solinger provides the first published analyses of maternity home programs for unwed mothers from 1945 to 1965, and examines how nascent cultural and political constructs such as the "population bomb" and the "sexual revolution" reinforced racially-specific public policy initiatives. Such initiatives encouraged white women to relinquish their babies, spawning a flourishing adoption market, while they subjected black women to social welfare policies which assumed they would keep their babies and aimed to prevent them from having more.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Kirkus Reviews
In a thorough and important, if often tiresomely repetitive, study, Solinger (Women's Studies/Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) dissects the politics of female fertility in America from 1945-65, when the strikingly different treatments of middle-class white and poor black pregnant teenagers clearly reflected the demands of a racist, family-centered economy. Before WW II, Solinger reports, unwed mothers in the US were considered the products of defective, amoral environments-- permanent outcasts for whom no kind of rehabilitation was possible. After the war, she argues, a perceived societal need to produce as many white children in ``healthy'' male-headed families as possible, combined with new Freudian psychological theories and racist sociological assumptions concerning black sexuality, engendered a dualistic treatment of unwed pregnant women depending on the color of their skin. Whereas the ``market value'' of white babies enabled and even encouraged white single mothers to ``sacrifice'' their offspring for adoption in exchange for a second chance at respectability (usually after exile in a maternity home), ``unmarketable'' illegitimate black babies were considered the inevitable product of the ``natural'' black libido and were therefore left to be raised by their mothers, who were in turn treated as incorrigible breeders who gave birth to win more government benefits. With the ``sexual revolution'' (for whites) and ``population bomb'' (for blacks) of the late 60's and early 70's came the technological fixes of birth control and legalized abortion--though these steps toward female self-determination for women of all races were more a result, Solinger claims, of a slump in the white baby market and fear of black overpopulation than of societal concern for the fate of single mothers. Revelatory but regrettably dry work with repercussions for today. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
This is a powerful and devastating book. Though it is scholarly, thoroughly researched and documented, it is also a touchingly personal book. Excerpts from case histories make it heartbreaking, consciousness raising, anger-producing and humbling. -- New Directions For Women
Solinger's book--the most brilliantly acute analysis of the central role of sexuality and race in postwar American culture yet written--is of particular relevance now that the Roe v. Wade era seems to be coming to an end. -- In These Times
The assault on single pregnancy--whether Murphy Brown's or the anonymous African-American teenager's on the evening news--encodes an attack on civil rights and women's rights. Wake Up Little Susie is indeed a wake-up call, warning us of the danger of the demand that women fix the body politic by letting others control their bodies. -- The Nation
Wake Up Little Susie is one of the best books about women and reproduction in years. Rickie Solinger shows the deep and powerful meanings that have been attached to unmarried pregnant women, and the way in which they have appeared as a social resource for others rather than as subjects. -- Linda Gordon, Florence Kelley Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison, author of Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, and Women, The State and Welfare
...the research, topic, and approach make this an exceptional work of social history. It captures the atmosphere of public coercion, stigma, and panic associated with pregnancy, abortion, and the entire subject of women and sexuality in the post war era. Certainly weaving the public policy and social implications of pregnancy for `unwed' Black and white women advances both feminist and Black scholarship. -- Barbara Omolade, City College of New York, Center for Worker Education
In this engrossing book, Rickie Solinger unravels the complex, disturbing reality of single pregnancyin the post World-War II era. With sensitivity and insight, she explores the way in which race, more than any other factor, defined the experience of unwed motherhood. Wake Up Little Susie is social history at its best. -- Elaine Tyler May, University of Minnesota, author of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
Wake Up Little Susie is a disturbing and illuminating book. -- Concerned United Birthparents Newsletter
Wake Up Little Susie dramatically reveals the cultural power of race and sex in the lives of young women from the end of the Second World War to about 1970. This history goes a long way toward explaining the racially charged rhetoric which still clings to debates surrounding unwed motherhood and reproductive rights. -- Sara M. Evans, University of Minnesota, author of Born For Liberty: A History of Women in America
...a stimulating study that should have a wide audience. -- New York Times Book Review
Those who want to put today's debates on race, poverty, and pregnancy into historical perspective should read Wake Up Little Susie, Rickie Solinger's timely and perceptive analysis of the years after World War II and before the legalization of abortion. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review
Wake Up Little Susie is essential reading for anyone interested in women, sexuality, race, the ideology of gender and the family, and public policy in the decades after World War II. -- Wini Breines, Northeastern University, author of Young, White and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Solinger's book--the most brilliantly acute analysis of the central role of sexuality and race in postwar American culture yet written--is of particular relevance now that the Roe v. Wade era seems to be coming to an end. -- In These Times
The assault on single pregnancy--whether Murphy Brown's or the anonymous African-American teenager's on the evening news--encodes an attack on civil rights and women's rights. Wake Up Little Susie is indeed a wake-up call, warning us of the danger of the demand that women fix the body politic by letting others control their bodies. -- The Nation
Wake Up Little Susie is one of the best books about women and reproduction in years. Rickie Solinger shows the deep and powerful meanings that have been attached to unmarried pregnant women, and the way in which they have appeared as a social resource for others rather than as subjects. -- Linda Gordon, Florence Kelley Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison, author of Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, and Women, The State and Welfare
...the research, topic, and approach make this an exceptional work of social history. It captures the atmosphere of public coercion, stigma, and panic associated with pregnancy, abortion, and the entire subject of women and sexuality in the post war era. Certainly weaving the public policy and social implications of pregnancy for `unwed' Black and white women advances both feminist and Black scholarship. -- Barbara Omolade, City College of New York, Center for Worker Education
In this engrossing book, Rickie Solinger unravels the complex, disturbing reality of single pregnancyin the post World-War II era. With sensitivity and insight, she explores the way in which race, more than any other factor, defined the experience of unwed motherhood. Wake Up Little Susie is social history at its best. -- Elaine Tyler May, University of Minnesota, author of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
Wake Up Little Susie is a disturbing and illuminating book. -- Concerned United Birthparents Newsletter
Wake Up Little Susie dramatically reveals the cultural power of race and sex in the lives of young women from the end of the Second World War to about 1970. This history goes a long way toward explaining the racially charged rhetoric which still clings to debates surrounding unwed motherhood and reproductive rights. -- Sara M. Evans, University of Minnesota, author of Born For Liberty: A History of Women in America
...a stimulating study that should have a wide audience. -- New York Times Book Review
Those who want to put today's debates on race, poverty, and pregnancy into historical perspective should read Wake Up Little Susie, Rickie Solinger's timely and perceptive analysis of the years after World War II and before the legalization of abortion. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review
Wake Up Little Susie is essential reading for anyone interested in women, sexuality, race, the ideology of gender and the family, and public policy in the decades after World War II. -- Wini Breines, Northeastern University, author of Young, White and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An insight into how Moms lost their children to adoption,
By
This review is from: Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade (Paperback)
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
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunningly accurate account of the unwed mother experience,
By A Customer
This review is from: Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v Wade (Hardcover)
Neither "tiresome", "repetitive" nor "dry" (as stated by one reviewer). On the contrary, this book is exciting and refreshingly insightful. Only a "birth" mother can attest to the truth and honesty of the experience Ms. Solinger painstakingly, courageously and historically details in "Wake Up Little Susie".
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Accurate Portrayal,
This review is from: Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v Wade (Hardcover)
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!
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Sally Brown and Brenda Johnson both became pregnant in 1957. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
maternity home residents, white single pregnancy, black single pregnancy, white unwed mothers, black unwed mothers, postwar adoption mandate, black unmarried mothers, single pregnant girls, nonmarital female sexuality, white unmarried mothers, benign neglecters, black illegitimate babies, maternity home care, white illegitimate babies, black illegitimacy, one unwed mother, many unwed mothers, unmarried parenthood, poor unwed mothers, white policy makers, benevolent reformers, single pregnant women, maternity homes, illegitimate pregnancy, unmarried pregnant girls Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, United States, Florence Crittenton, Children's Bureau, Salvation Army, World War, Maud Morlock, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Leontine Young, Annie Lee Davis, Cook County, Dependent Children, San Francisco, Jean Thompson, Door of Hope, Housing Authority, Miss Williams, Clark Vincent, Jane Wrieden, Jersey City, Catholic Charities, Child Welfare League of America, District of Columbia, Judge Woodward New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Sally Brown and Brenda Johnson both became pregnant in 1957. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
maternity home residents, white single pregnancy, black single pregnancy, white unwed mothers, black unwed mothers, postwar adoption mandate, black unmarried mothers, single pregnant girls, nonmarital female sexuality, white unmarried mothers, benign neglecters, black illegitimate babies, maternity home care, white illegitimate babies, black illegitimacy, one unwed mother, many unwed mothers, unmarried parenthood, poor unwed mothers, white policy makers, benevolent reformers, single pregnant women, maternity homes, illegitimate pregnancy, unmarried pregnant girls Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, United States, Florence Crittenton, Children's Bureau, Salvation Army, World War, Maud Morlock, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Leontine Young, Annie Lee Davis, Cook County, Dependent Children, San Francisco, Jean Thompson, Door of Hope, Housing Authority, Miss Williams, Clark Vincent, Jane Wrieden, Jersey City, Catholic Charities, Child Welfare League of America, District of Columbia, Judge Woodward New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 58
books:
See all 58 books this book cites
28
books
cite this book:
See all 28 books citing this book
- Aid to Dependent Children by Winifred Bell on 13 pages
- Out of Wedlock: A Study of the Problems of the Unmarried Mother and Her Child by Leontine R. Young on 7 pages
- Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation by Helena Deutsch on 4 pages
- Tomorrow's Tomorrow: The Black Woman by Joyce A. Ladner in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present (Revised Edition) by Mimi Abramovitz in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
See all 58 books this book cites
- Malthusian Worlds: U.s. Leadership And The Governing Of The Population Crisis (Polemics Series) by Ronald Walter Greene on page 156, and Back Matter
- The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s (Columbia Guides to American History and Cultures) by David Farber in Back Matter
- When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 by Leslie J. Reagan in Back Matter
- Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico by Laura Briggs in Back Matter
- Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism by Helena Ragone in Back Matter
See all 28 books citing this book
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