With child, without man, without virtue

>> Bringing back the good old days, when single moms were ashamed of themselves

by JACQUIE CHARLTON

The husbandless pregnant woman is one of the more ignoble figures in history. One hundred years ago, unmarried women who gave birth would often smother their newborns or dump them in garbage cans. Reports of infanticide had gotten so bad in Quebec that in 1840 an archbishop publicly condemned it. Later in the century, unwed mothers would sneak over to one Montreal orphanage to place their newborns on a specially-made wooden turntable revolving in and out of the building like a sort of ignominious night deposit slot.

Think things have gotten better in the '90s? A completely new family-values style of morality is doing its best to ensure that shame still hovers over unmarried pregnancy. Only one month ago, for instance, Ontario Premier Mike Harris stated that pregnant women on welfare, who for the most part are single, would no longer be getting their $37-a-month pregnancy supplement because he figured they spent it on beer.

A fascinating chapter in the history of unwed pregnancy is provided in a new book by CBC Newsworld talkshow host Anne Petrie, who was in town two weeks ago and spoke with the Mirror. Her book is called Gone to an Aunt's, the title referring to the term family members would use to explain a pregnant girl's absence. Her real whereabouts was a home for unwed mothers, the unmentionable.

They were around as recently as 30 years ago, these homes, secret, unmarked places where unmarried pregnant girls and women were hidden away for a few months, made subtly or overtly to feel they were fallen women, and had their babies, who were then taken away from them and given up for adoption. When the messy business was done, the women would go home.

Every one of the girls' stories has some degree of sadness (for example, the heartbreaking account of how girls in one home listened through the walls to determine what kind of people their babies' adoptive parents would be). But the saddest story Petrie heard in the course of her research is that of a 14-year-old Métis girl, now 54, who was raped by her older sister's friend at a drunken party in their home. When she got pregnant she was told by a priest that she was damned for doing what only married people did, and she threw herself down a flight of stairs. She survived the fall only to hear another priest call her an animal and tell her no man would ever want her.

And then there are other, lighter touches of cruelty collected by Petrie, like the spraypainting one night of "Your daughter's pregnant" on one family's garage.

Petrie herself was an unwed mother at age 20, in the mid-'60s. She fell in love with an older man, got pregnant, and was met with nothing but a blank stare when she told him the news. Safe abortions being virtually unobtainable at the time, it became clear to Petrie that her only alternative was a home. Chastened by the whole experience, she packed her bags for a Salvation Army home to live for a few months. When her son was born he was given to a family she didn't know. She says she went on with life after that and had no regrets, but found when she visited new mothers in hospitals later on, she would unaccountably burst into tears. She began a search for her son five years ago and found him, a young man whom she says was raised wonderfully.

Some things have changed now, of course. The shame associated with unmarried pregnancy has abated somewhat, despite the best efforts of Newt Gingrich and Harris. Interestingly, one sector of society--teenage street kids--seems to have done away with every last vestige of it in a rather refreshing, if alarming, way. Single street girls have reportedly begun having children not from a lack of birth control education or simple messing up, but on purpose, to gain some shaky social status where none else is available. Petrie, who has visited homes in Toronto where street kids and their babies can live together off the streets for a couple of years, says sometimes the girls get pregnant because it's the only thing they feel they can do right.

"What's really funny now is you ask them how they felt when they got pregnant. And half of them say, 'Oh, I was really happy! And my friends were really happy too!'" The challenge, Petrie says, is to persuade them they're good at something else.