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Listen to Jennifer Havlik as she recommends American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser. This is Jennifer Havlik with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today I’m recommending
American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser. This recently released work of nonfiction tells the story of Margaret Erle who falls in love and becomes pregnant with her first child at the age of sixteen. Unfortunately for Margaret and many young women like her, she came of age at a time when birth control was difficult to obtain, abortions were illegal, and young, unwed mothers were deemed pariahs. With the threat of eternal shame looming over her family, Margaret is sent to a home for unwed mothers where she discreetly gives birth. While she dreams of marrying her boyfriend and keeping her son, she doesn’t realize the battle she’s up against.
Renee Ghert-Zand is a reporter and feature writer for The Times of Israel.
Stephen Mark Erle (later David Rosenberg) at age six months in 1962. His birth mother Margaret Erle was coerced into signing away her parental rights. This photo was taken during the first of just two meetings Margaret and the baby s father birth father George Katz were allowed with him while in foster care prior to his adoption. (Courtesy of Margaret Erle Katz)
George Katz and Margaret Erle, when Margaret was six months pregnant and about to be sent to the Lakeview Home for Unwed Jewish Mothers on Staten Island, 1961. (Courtesy of Margaret Erle Katz)
Margaret Erle, the 16-year-old daughter of refugees from Nazi Germany, fell in love with George Katz, 17, the son of two Viennese Holocaust survivors in Upper Manhattan in 1960.
At the time, there was little birth control, no sex education, and abortion, of course, was illegal. Like more than 3 million other young unwed women in America, Margaret got pregnant. Her family pressured her into seclusion at Lakeview, a maternity home on Staten Island run by Louise Wise Services, the go-to adoption agency of the era for Jewish families. New York State back then required that the religion of a birth mother had to match that of the prospective adoptive parents.
Thu 9 AM | Goodbye, Forever: The Days Of Closed Adoptions Examined ijpr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ijpr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.