Enduring Shame: A Recent History of Unwed Pregnancy and Righteous Reproduction

253 Pages·2022·10.002 MB·English

by  Heather Brook Adams

Enduring
Shame

Enduring
Shame
A Recent History of
Unwed Pregnancy
and Righteous
Reproduction
Heather Brook Adams
© 2022 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.uscpress.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/.
ISBN: 978-1-64336-293-9 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-64336-294-6 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-64336-295-3 (ebook)
Front cover design by Emily Weigel
In loving memory of Ludmilla,
and the innumerable women like her

Contents
List of Illustrations.........................................................viii
Acknowledgments .........................................................ix
Introduction: Sex, Shame, and Rhetoric......................................1
One Unwed Pregnancy and Radial Rhetorics of Shame ........................ 29
Two New Permissiveness, Stigma, and Unwed Pregnancy in the Early 1970s .... 76
Three Macrochange, Reproductive Agency, and the Stickiness of Shame ....... 105
Four Rhetorical Blame and Pregnant Teens in the Late 1970s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Conclusion: The Legacies of Righteous Reproduction ...................... 188
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Bibliography............................................................. 215
Index ................................................................... 231
Illustrations
Figure 1. Illustration for the Repeal Hyde Art Project......................... 23
Figure 2. Florence Crittenton Home interior, Toledo, Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Figure 3. Crittenton brochure, Topeka, Kansas............................... 61
Figure 4. Crittenton “home life,” Chattanooga, Tennessee .................... 62
Figure 5. “Our Girls” from a Florence Crittenton publication ................. 169
Figure 6. New clientele of “girls” from a Philadelphia Florence
Crittenton publication........................................... 172
Acknowledgments
Writing a book across years, locations, and political contexts has been a com-
plex affair—a vacillation between “just send it out” and “rethink and reshape.”
Now I realize that a book is a phenomenon that can and should assume the
space it needs. Foundational research for this project was possible because of
support from Pennsylvania State University, including the Center for Demo-
cratic Deliberation. A University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG) New
Faculty Award and a UNCG Marc Friedlaender Faculty Excellence Award in
English enabled significant research, interviews, and development. Essential
work at the University of Minnesota Social Welfare History Archive was possi-
ble thanks to a Clarke Chambers Travel Fellowship and the generous assistance
of archivists Linnea Anderson and David Klassen.
Chapter 1 includes material from my article “Rhetorics of Unwed Mother-
hood and Shame” in Women’s Studies in Communication 40, no.1 (2017) copy-
right © Organization for Research on Women and Communication, reprinted by
permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, www.tandfonline.com, on behalf of Orga-
nization for Research on Women and Communication. A portion of chapter 3
was drawn from my essay “The Feminist Work of Unsticking Shame: Affective
Realignment in the 1973 Edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves,” published in Peitho
21, no. 3 (2019). A special thank you to Megan J. Smith for permitting me to
share her artwork in this book.
I owe a debt of gratitude to many people, starting with Cristian Núñez,
“research assistant” extraordinaire and life partner. For innumerable reasons,
without you this project would not be.
Cheryl Glenn’s brilliance is the inspiration for and the foundation of this
book. Her labor to help me trust my mind and voice is as generous a gift as I
could imagine. Cheryl, you are, simply, unparalleled in grace, magnanimity,
and verve. My appreciation, dear friend, will never feel sufficient.
Special thanks to the mothers who were willing to meet with me, open their
homes and lives to me, and to share a most sacred part of their experience. I ap-
preciate your patience and hope I have honored your wisdom on these pages.