The Girl Nobody Loved: Psychological Explanations for White Single Pregnancy in the Pre-Roe v. Wade Era, 1945-1965

Abstract

Today public discourse about pregnancy often centers on the biological or religious meaning of conception: when does life begin? When is the fetus viable? In the years between World War II and Roe v. Wade, however, public discourse about pregnancy-especially single pregnancy-assumed racially specific forms. Though in this era of rapidly rising illegitimacy rates' single pregnant women of whatever race still shared a debased social status, the cause of black single pregnancy was portrayed as the strength of black women's biological, sexual urges and their absence of psyche, while white pregnancy (both single and marital) was now discussed mainly in psychoanalytic terms. Psychiatrists argued that a real woman lived to fulfill her destiny as wife and childbearer. When they considered white women who were unhappily pregnant, including white unwed mothers, they asked what disorder or disease accounted for behavior that denied this destiny. The clear distinction between the motivations, the sexuality, and the offspring of black and white unmarried mothers determined the levels and kinds of responsibility society should have for these two groups of unmarried mothers and their babies. Other portions of my current research deal with the theoretical and practical treatment of black unwed mothers during this period;2 this essay focuses on the adaptations of psychoanalytic theory that gained currency in the postwar era as explanations for white unwed pregnancy, and explores how these adaptations shaped treatment strategies for white, broadly middle-class unwed mothers.3 Both the psychological theories and the social policies they supported treated individuals in ways that shored up the postwar family agenda: they absolved the male sexual partner of responsibility; rendered white illegitimate babies adoptable by removing any inheritable taint; made white unwed mothers marriageable despite the episode of illegitimate pregnancy; punished nonmarital female sexuality; and generally reinforced the containment of females in roles of domestic subordination. The psychological explanations did provide a form of social protection for many white girls and women. But these diagnoses were applied indiscriminately and coercively to all white unwed mothers, thus rendering them, both as a group and individually, mentally ill.