Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade [Paperback]

Rickie Solinger (Author), Elaine Tyler May (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0415926769 | ISBN-13: 978-0415926768 | Edition: 2

Twenty-five years after the Supreme Court's landmark decision, abortion rights are as fiercely contested as ever and current debates over welfare, workfare, and public assistance to women with children demonstrate the way in which race and class continue to effect women's reproductive freedom. A pioneering work, Wake Up Little Susie reveals how current attitudes toward these issues developed by examining their roots in the postwar era and discerning how differently they affected black and white women. A powerful and shocking book, Susie is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the complex and disturbing politics surrounding issues of race, class and reproductive rights. This new edition includes a foreword by the esteemed social historian, Elaine Tyler May, and an afterword by the author that places the issues examined in Susie in the context of the current controversies.

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

A stunning but troubling book that illuminates the deeply racialized terrain on which the politics of women's reproductive capacities and decisions have been played out. Contributing mightily to contemporary social policy debates, this rich history of single pregnancy from 1945 to 1965 warns us that reproductive rights must not only guard each woman's choice to contracept or to terminate a pregnancy, but also must win honor and social support for each woman's choice to become a mother.
–Gwendolyn Mink, author of Welfare's End

It is impossible to read Wake Up Little Susie without understanding that racism as well as a deeply felt distrust of women as mothers--magnified when the women are not formally subordinated to husbands--makes such odd national passions possible.
–Bernice L. Hausman, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, vol 4.1

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (February 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415926769
• ISBN-13: 978-0415926768
• Product Dimensions: 0.4 x 0.8 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #886,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An insight into how Moms lost their children to adoption November 27, 2002

By Linda A. Webber

Format: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

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly accurate account of the unwed mother experience October 12, 1999

By A Customer

Format: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 July 19, 2000

By Tricia Shore

Format: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!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Ground-breaking! Solinger has dared to tell the truth. August 11, 1998

By Dr. P. Farrar

Format:Paperback

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.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Society's 50's & 60's attitude about unwed pregnancy June 30, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Not for everybody, BUT if you are a birthmother who relinquished a child 1940-1975, or an adoptee or adoptive parent involved in adoption from same period, READ this. The attitudes and treatment have changed so much that reading this is important for anyone involved in an adoption during that period of time. It also reveals interesting differences in attitudes and behavior between white, middle-class America and other groups.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great study on pregnancy pre-roe v wade January 22, 2009

By Heather

Format:Paperback

This is a great study on what it was like for women, both black and white, to deal with pregnancy outside the institution of marriage. This book is well-researched and it reads like a book you would read for a college class so it is not something to just pick up and read on the beach. This book is highly informative and easy to read. The author has organized each chapter well and there is an extensive biography at the end of the book in case readers are interested as to where she obtained her information or who are interested to get other books on the same topic.

This book took me awhile to get through because it is not light reading. It is dense and has a great number of arguments and details in it but its worth the read if you are interested in post-WWII unwed pregnancy and how different the experience was depending on your race. This book definitely makes the female readers of today grateful for the Roe v Wade case that made abortion a legal practice in this country.

I would only recommend this book to people who are truely interested in the subject matter. Otherwise you will find this book dry and boring.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read to Learn About Adoption History January 28, 2011

By Amanda

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is an excellent resource to understand not only Women's Rights but also to understand the rights of individuals impacted by adoption and how adoption and other policies and practices have been used to punish women for bearing children outside of wedlock. Countless women lost children to adoption and society today still seems none-the-wiser as to how these women were treated.

The stereotypes of adoption would quickly fade away if everyone would take a moment and read books like these that are so well researched and cited.

13 of 19 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Social Values and the Decline of Adoption December 18, 2000

By Crack Reviewer

Format:Paperback

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.

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