The Adoption Mandate in Postwar Canada Valerie Andrews A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE ...

289 Pages·2017·10.62 MB·English

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.
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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
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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
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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
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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