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Redefining "Real" Motherhood Representations of Adoptive Mothers. 1900-1950 Julie Berebitsky In 1920, a woman who had been adopted as a child wrote an article for a popular magazine in which she tried to dispel many of the misconceptions about adoption. She devoted much of her account to proving that adoptive mothers were in fact "real" mothers. To make the point, she recounted the story of a friend who also had been adopted as a young child. When grown, this woman, now a mother of two, met her birth mother for the first time. '''She kissed me; and I kissed her; my friend told me. 'Then I sat down in a chair and stared at her. I could see that my features resembled hers. But, in all truth, I could not feel that she was my mother. My mother was the 'mother' of my baby days, just as real as anything can be, despite the fact of my birth. She was my children's grandmother -not this stranger! I tell you, I couldn't feel it any other way. It's the love and the care which make a mother a mother, more than the child-bearing does: "1 It is impossible to knowhow many readers would have agreed with this view, but given the focus of the article and the vehemence with which the author asserted this claim, it seems clear that she felt most Americans believed "real" mothers were biological ones. Throughout the period covered in this study, it has been assumed (to a greater or lesser degree at various moments) that all "normal"women were or wanted to be mothers. Motherhood and maternal sacrifice generally were glorified and romanticized and described as a woman's highest and truest calling and as the key to her female identity. Many people looked askance at married women (especially middle-class and elite women) who were not mothers, often labeling them selfish or immature and questioning their womanhood. These beliefs encouraged-indeed compelled-women to derive their identity from relationships to their children. Aside from any individual maternal desire that a woman may have felt, women lived their lives within a culture filled with social incentives, encouragements, and pressures to mother. In short, motherhood conferred status, nonmotherhood only stigma.2 However, the dominant culture's idealization of mothers generally equated motherhood with biology, not nurturance. Because they had not given birth, adoptive mothers found themselves on the edges of the culture's ideal. Commentators often portrayed adoptive motherhood as different from and inferior to biological motherhood. In response, adoptive mothers (and their advocates) 83 84 Imagining Adoption argued for a definition of motherhood that would legitimate their identity as "real" mothers. Adoptive mothers never completely rejected the prevailing ideology of motherhood. Rather, they made their claim by showing how their motherhood especially fit with certain tenets of the ideal that were not dependent on a blood tie or physical maternity. Because they defined their motherhood in relation to the ideal, representations of adoptive motherhood shifted as the dominant understanding of motherhood changed. Before 1920, prescriptive literature emphasized the power of adoption to protect and save society and presented adoptive mothers both as "rescuers" of society's cast-off children and as women with strong, even exceptional, maternal instincts. In this construction, many believed that single women had as much right to adopt as married women. During this period, adoptive mothers had few chances publicly to name their own experience. When they did have the chance, many used the rhetoric of redemption, but they also insisted that motherhood was a spiritual, not a physical, state. After 1920, responding to a changed social climate and an altered understanding of motherhood and family life, the portrayal of adoption and adoptive mothers shifted. Although representations highlighted the everyday similarities between adoptive and biological families, they also emphasized what now could be seen as the positive difference ofadoption . Authors used the vocabulary of choice to underscore adoptive mothers' conscious decision to mother and their unique preparedness for motherhood. Adoptive mothers often reiterated and even celebrated the idealized construction of motherhood, yet they also posed a challenge to the narrow definition of motherhood and offered an alternative to the biological family. The united voices ofadoptive mothers helped expand the ideal beyond blood to include ties of care and commitment. Although women have always borne and cared for children, both women's actual experience as mothers and the culture's understanding of the institution of motherhood have changed...

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