Tag Archives: The Handmaid’s Tale and birthmothers

The Handmaid’s Baby Scoop

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A scene from “The Handmaid’s Tale”

The Handmaid’s Tale and adoption

As is often the case, I’m a little late to the party. I just finished watching the last episode of the Hulu version of Margaret Atwood’s book, The Handmaid’s Tale. It pretty much killed me. Ever since I began watching I would frequently google, “Is Margaret Atwood a birthmother?” When that didn’t bring up much, I’d change tactics and google, “Is Margaret Atwood an adoptive mother?” With still no luck I tried, “Is Margaret Atwood adopted?”

Okay. I gave up. But somehow Margaret Atwood nailed what it was like to be a birthmother in the Baby Scoop Era. Secrecy reigned in the adoption industry then. Hell, secrecy still reigns in many ways. Anyway, Atwood’s fictional vision and the real life Baby Scoop are quite similar. Young fertile unmarried women were coerced into giving up their babies to those society deemed more worthy under the burgeoning theocracy known as the United States of America.

In the last episode of season 1 Jeannine is about to be stoned by her sister handmaids for the crime of endangering a child. She took her baby from its adoptive parents and nearly succeeding in hurling both herself and the baby off a bridge. In an act of civil disobedience not one of the handmaids will hurl the first stone. This communal act is what made me weep.

There was very little support for birthmothers in 1970 when I had my son. I labored and delivered alone. And after signing the papers, there was no mourning. The entire experience was a deep dark secret. End of story. For two decades, anyway. After watching that last episode, there’s now a scene In my head in an adoption agency with a contingent of birthmothers, and no one will pick up the pen.

And there’s this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/watching/the-handmaids-tale-tv-finale-margaret-atwood.html?mcubz=1

Baby Scoop and other tragedies

Ms. Atwood pays homage to the women whose reproductive rights were abused under Nicolae Ceausescu and Hitler, and she mentions the 500 babies in Argentina who were disappeared, and the indigenous babies of both Australia and Canada, but there’s not a word about the women and babies from the Baby Scoop Era. According to the Adoption History Project from the University of Oregon, the Baby Scoop Era in the United States pertains to the period between 1945 and 1973. It is estimated that up to 4 million mothers in the United States had children placed for adoption during that time. Four million handmaids.

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The Handmaid’s Tale: Episode 2

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A scene from “The Handmaid’s Tale”

Dystopian future/dystopian past

Probably you’ve at least heard of it–“The Handmaid’s Tale.” It seems like everyone is talking about the Hulu series set in the dystopian future. Women with two good ovaries are fated to be surrogates for wives of societal stature who are infertile. For birthmothers this is where the dystopian future meets the dystopia past. Birthmothers have already lived in this world during the Baby Scoop Era and handed over our children to those that society deemed worthy.

I felt this when I read the book in 1989 (while nursing my youngest child,) but watching it come alive on the screen brought a bitterness that I have not tasted for some time.

In the story it’s customary for all the handmaids in the neighborhood to attend a birth. While the adoptive mother in waiting lies on a white sheet in a stylish living room, moaning though fake labor pains with the other wives coaching her, upstairs the real labor progresses with the handmaid who is lucky enough to have conceived a child in this toxic future world. When the birth is imminent, the handmaid leaves the luxurious marriage  bed  for a birthing chair, the privileged wife sitting behind her as if she too is pushing through the labor pains. When the baby is out, it’s the wife who situates herself in bed and receives the baby. The handmaid, (birthmother) is just a few feet away, empty-handed and anguished, longing to hold her child. A sister handmaid gently guides guides the birthmother’s face away from the baby and its new mother. Then the entire room of handmaids converge on her, hovering over her, murmuring their comfort. It’s a wrenching scene, but for those of us who were handmaids of the 60s and 70s, we had no compatriots.

Reality was worse

At the moment of my son’s birth, the intern in the delivery room joyfully asked me if this was my first child. Before I had a chance to utter a syllable, the doctor in charge guffawed. “She’s an unwed mother,” he said. My son was wrapped is a blanket and whisked away.

I suspect most of us gave birth that way. No family present. The baby’s father not allowed anywhere near. No murmured comforts anywhere.