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| The restructuring of society‘s views towards the proper
role of American women in the timeframe of 1820-1860 was defined by
Barbara Welter as the CULT OF TRUE WOMANHOOD.
Society dictated feminine virtues and roles for women within the domestic
sphere and stressed four attributes or virtues for what would soon
be defined as a LADY: piety, purity,
submissiveness and domesticity. 1 This cult also created a rosy glow around adoption. It was portrayed as an act of great love and self-sacrifice. Pregnant unmarried women were painted as innocent victims who had briefly fallen from the path of virtue. Their social status could be REDEEMED by giving their children up for adoption. 2 The cult painted adoption as a ‘selfless act’ and an opportunity for an unwed woman to regain some sort of status. |
| Yet underlying society’s view of adoption was the desire
that the unwed woman be punished for her pregnant status by disallowing
her to raise her own child outside of the social frame of marriage.
However, some women relinquished their children because they simply
did not want to parent. These women would invariably share the Cuckoo
Bird‘s deviant label: society viewed their rejection of their
mothering role as a rejection of their own femaleness. There were as many reasons for relinquishing a child as there were different women. Often adoption was a solution to situations beyond a woman’s control: dire financial straits, unmarried status, familial and social pressure. Some women did not feel prepared to parent at that time or did not want children at all. Even if a women wanted to keep her child, she was not in the position to do so for if she was seen and defined as property, she could not ‘own’ her own property [assume guardianship over her own children].The general rule decreed that a legitimate child belonged by law or custom to its father. 3 |
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1 THE CULT OF TRUE WOMANHOOD & THE WESTERN
MOVEMENT, Jerry L. Parker, Chico Historian, Spring 1992. |
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