Major Contributor
You have the passion, commitment, and talents for this project and are willing to play a critical role – research, writing, editing, sponsoring, funding, technical support, funding or promoting.
Click hereInfant Relinquishment: The Untold History
During the 1960s hundreds of thousands of women, mostly young and unmarried, relinquished their infants to adoption and social service agencies. These women were shamed, silenced, and isolated. This important part of history remains untold and unshared today. It is time to change this NOW … failed practices of the past echo today in our sons and daughters and in current processes of adoption and assisted reproduction. The women who can tell the story are dying off.
We need your help NOW to make our voices heard.
About
Preserving a history that was hidden by design
This project was conceived by a group of women with years of experience in support groups, adoption reform advocacy groups and birthparent organizations.
This history remains untold on purpose…secrecy and silence were the guiding principles of our experience, and history is most often written by the men who often were erased from our stories.
The era of closed adoptions has largely come to an end, and those that can testify to the experience are dying off. While closed adoptions may be on the decline, some of the practices – convincing women they are unworthy to parent, signing legal documents without informed consent or legal representation, for instance - are not.This is an ambitious project, and it must be done now and by you. Those who relinquished infants – mothers and fathers – are the only ones who can and will tell the story.
Volunteer
You can help in a number of ways
Add My Story (Mother)
I am willing to complete a questionnaire to collect data for this project.
Click hereTell My Story (Mother)
I am willing to be interviewed one on one, have my voice recorded and quoted.
Click hereAdd My Story (Father)
I am willing to complete a questionnaire to collect data for this project.
Click hereTell My Story (Father)
I am willing to be interviewed one on one, have my voice recorded and quoted.
Click hereContact Us
Interim Project Leader
Eileen McQuade
Eileen [email protected]
561.414.1810
Eileen has been active in birthparent support groups since 1997. She was a member of the Access Connecticut Board of Directors, which secured the right of adult adoptees to their original birth certificate, and has advised groups in Texas, Massachusetts, Louisiana, and California.
Currently the leader of the Catholic Mothers for Truth and Transparency, she is a former board member and president of the American Adoption Congress. She relinquished her daughter in 1966 and has been in reunion for 30 years.
Interim Advisory Group
- Leslie Pate McKinnon
- Jean Strauss
- Mimi Janes
- Eileen Drennen
Do You Remember?
I relinquished my baby in 1966, at the height of the Baby Scoop Era. An essential part of my healing is revisiting those days to understand who I was and why I made the decisions I did.
I graduated from high school in June 1965. Our tinny transistor radios played tunes of male domination: “I Will Follow Him,” “Leader of the Pack,” and “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To.”
Girls could aspire to be a nurse, secretary, or teacher, until they were married, had children, and became homemakers. Military recruiters were welcome at school with promises of adventure and Hawaii. Vietnam was not mentioned. Only boys were welcome. Sex education was abstinence.
In Massachusetts, where I attended college, contraception for unmarried women and abortion was illegal. No one in my family had ever attended college. I was white, middle-class, suburban, Irish, and Catholic. Unwed mothers were stereotyped as reckless and morally suspect.
Anonymous
In 1966 I had consensual sexual intercourse when I was unmarried. I was delivered of a daughter and signed papers of relinquishment to the Catholic Home Society of New York. These were my actions, and I am responsible for them and all the consequences.
Bob Dylan told us, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Social protest against the Vietnam War, the establishment, and women’s rights dominated the headlines in 1968. Food stamps were made available in all states. Contraception bans were overturned in the courts, culminating in Roe v. Wade in 1973. The Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1971.
Our stereos blasted a new soundtrack: “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!” “Go Where You Want to Go, Do What You Want to Do,” and “Respect.” I never became a nurse, teacher, or secretary. Instead, I graduated cum laude with a major in history and a minor in philosophy, then built a long, successful career in information technology and insurance management.
Eileen McQuade · July 20, 2026