Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Board:
Rebecca Adams,
 UNC-Greensboro

Bob Davis,
 North Carolina
 Agricultural and
 Technical State
 University

Catherine Harris,
 Wake Forest
 University

Ella Keller,
 Fayetteville
 State University

Ken Land,
 Duke University

Miles Simpson,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Ron Wimberley,
 N.C. State University

Robert Wortham,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Editorial Assistants

John W.M. Russell,
 Technical
 Consultant

Austin W. Ashe,
 Duke University

® 

Volume 8, Number 1

Spring/Summer 2010

An Unwed Mother's Own Story*

by

Joseph S. Himes

Founding President 
The North Carolina Sociological Association

Introduction

    This is the story of Lucy, a Negro unwed mother. Lucy became pregnant during her sophomore year in college.  After an absence of three years, she returned to college to pick up her studies where they were interrupted.  Below she tells in her own words why she became an unwed mother.

    This life history document is instructive for several reasons.  From one perspective it is the classic saga of Negro youths trying to lift themselves by means of education from poverty, ignorance and disorganization to a better life.  Like "Sporting Life" in Porgy and Bess, her father was unstable, unfaithful, and neglectful.  Lucy's mother was the stalwart center of the family, supporting and encouraging the children with her devotion, hard work and sacrifices.

    From another perspective Lucy's story shows us how an unwanted and unanticipated pregnancy can interrupt and spoil this hard won escape from deprivation.  But, as sometimes happens, this unwed mother has metamorphosed (or at least tried) her misfortune into a personal asset.  Lucy returned to college a wiser, maturer and more determined girl than the one who left in tears three years earlier.  This fact agrees with a finding reported in an earlier study(1).  In that study 94 of 100 Negro college women asserted that if they became pregnant before marriage, they would feel "challenged to straighten out and succeed."

    Of even more importance, Lucy's story provides some useful insights into the etiology of unwed motherhood.  The decisions and actions that issue into premarital coitus, pregnancy and motherhood and refusal to relinquish the baby appear as integral elements of a life pattern.  They are related to childhood and adolescent experiences in family, school, and community.  They emerge from the crossfire of conflicting values and divergent aspirations(2).  Lucy wanted to be a "good girl" but she also wanted the response of men.  She did not want to be an unwed mother, but once pregnant, she did not want to give up her baby.  Lucy wanted to be successful, but she also wanted to be loved.  Hylan Lewis in a flash of rare insight captures the ambivalences and value conflicts that tend to nurture unwed motherhood in so many poor and frustrated girls(3).

    The belief is not valid that broad categories of people, such as low income groups, newcomers and certain ethnic minorities, are not troubled by illegitimacy.  Birth and wedlock and marriage are important values, but in any given instance, both or either might be preempted by another important value, or the realization of them might be thwarted by practical considerations.

I was born April 7, 1940 in a small community.  My parents were poor and didn't have anything.  There was one girl, a year older than I, but she died at eight months of age.  One brother died when he was he three months old.  I have two brothers living, one is 20 years old and the other is 14.  So now there are three children.  In the community there were no close neighbors, so I had no playmates, only when I went to stay with my grandmother who lived in another community.

My parents fussed and fought all the time ever since I could remember.  My father left my mother when I was about five years old and my oldest brother was about two.  He (my father) stayed gone about nine months.  During this time we stayed with some of my mother's relatives, which wasn't so pleasant.  We lived there for a while and then we moved in with my mother's aunt who was mean to us children.

Then my father came back and sweet-talked my mother into taking him back.  This time she had another child.  They stayed together for a while without fussing and fighting.  Then the fussing and fighting began between mother and father.  My father never played the part of a real father, never was loving and kind to us.

    Childhood experiences present the classic syndrome of disorganization—poor and uneducated parents, parents in conflict, broken home.  The subject recalls that she was unhappy but does not fully understand the reasons.  She was strongly affected by the neglect and abandonment by her father.  It seems unlikely that a girl from this kind of family and community background would ever get to college.  As will appear later, the strain toward upward mobility constitutes one dimension of the subject's personal and cultural conflicts.
 

My brother and I got along very well together.  My mother tried to teach us to the best of her knowledge.  However, I wasn't considered a very happy child.  This was due part to my father's way of treating us.  For example, in elementary school there were some kids who knew my father and every Monday there was one who would always tell about my father and his girl friend.  This would make me cry.  It would be very hard for me to explain my childhood life clearly.  I do feel that I became inferior from the treatment I had during my childhood.  Two threads in the pattern are revealed here.

    First, this girl grew up in a world of ambivalence about sex.  Her father had a "girl friend” outside the family.  At the same time, the subject's mother doubtless taught her about sex "to the best of her knowledge."  It is probable however, that the subject's parents regarded sex as a most natural and private part of their marital relationship.  These and other experiences were contributing to a self image that emerged clearly in high school and college.  Later, as we shall see, the sense of inferiority and self disparagement functioned as one determining factor in her sexual behavior.
 

The first two or three years in high school I thought nothing about sex.  It didn't appeal to me.  I dated a few boys and wasn't really interested in their petting or sex appeal.  As for petting I care very little about it even now unless I am with someone I really care for.

I guess I thought that boys should take the place of a father because I didn't have a good father.  Everything a fellow told me I believed because I thought he might love me.  Yet I still had that inferiority complex.

I didn't become involved in sexual relationships until about my last year in high school.  Before then I was really afraid of sexual relationships because of pregnancy or of catching some type of disease.  In my first sexual relationship I liked the boy very much and thought he liked me.

    Note here the frank recognition of the need for response that was denied by the neglect or hostility of her father.  In this situation she turned to boys for male response.  Lucy's apparent gullibility toward boys and her fear of sexual experiences may simply be evidences of naiveté and immaturity.  During her senior year in high school, when she was physiologically more mature, she accepted sexual intercourse as part of a "liking" relationship with a boy(4).  As is shown in the following paragraph, however, this girl's entry into the world of sexual contacts was largely unguided by knowledgeable adults.
 

My parents never told me anything about sex and the ideas of sex. Maybe my parents were ashamed of sex and lacked sex education.  My father didn't have time and didn't know anything about sex education.  The most I learned about sex was from schoolmates and their conversations.  The sex books I could get to read was another way I learned about sex.  The change of the body of a woman I learned about from books and conversations, because my mother didn't know how to explain it to me.

    Lucy's sex education was full of ambivalences and contradictions.  She doubtless learned from the adults of her social class that sex is a natural part of life.  As Paul H. Gebhard and associates observed of lower-class Negroes:  "… coitus is regarded as an inevitable, natural and desirable activity to be enjoyed both in and out of marriage,…"(5)  Meanwhile, as Lucy told us above, her mother taught her the best she could.  Doubtless part of this teaching consisted of the Protestant "sex is bad" mores.  In adolescence this value conflict was aggravated by the need for social recognition and male response.
 

I went to college still having that inferiority complex, and managed to make it for two years.  I didn't have many college friends.  The school work wasn't really as hard as I had thought it would be.  I was just ashamed and bashful.  It was a little hard getting adjusted to the new regulations of the college.

While I was in college for those two years I didn't try to change my identity.  By this I mean that I remained the same little country girl that I was when I came.  Therefore, I didn't date any of the college men because I felt that they might not think that I was good enough or looked good enough for them.  I felt that my dress was not like what the college boys would like.

So, by not associating with the college fellows I turned to the city fellows.  Toward the end of my second year in college a fellow filled my head with a lot of sweet talk and lies which I fell for.  I ended up by going with him and then I got pregnant.

As soon as I thought I was pregnant, I went straight to the fellow and told him because I felt that he should know.  Then too, I was going to Washington, D.C. for the summer and I thought he should know before I left.  We discussed marriage.  But I found out that he couldn't marry me then because he was already married and separated from his wife.  He told me that he was only waiting for two years to pass which would have been in November(7).

I began to wonder about the idea of being pregnant.  The fellow seemed to be willing to help and he assured me that he would support the child.  I didn't think too much about an abortion or putting the child up for adoption(9).  Then too, I was afraid of abortion.

After I came back from Washington, D.C., I found out what type of fellow I had gotten tied up with.  He wasn't really the man I thought he was.  We had a big fight about the matter.  But, well, so much for him.  I had rather not discuss that.

    Notice how naturally Lucy arrived at the decision to continue the pregnancy to full term and to retain the baby.  In a sense these are the crucial decisions of unwed motherhood.  An abortion or adoption makes it possible for the girl to take up life again as though she had not been a mother.  However, possession of a baby is tangible proof of motherhood.  But for Lucy, given her social class and cultural background, the alternatives of abortion and adoption had little validity.  In the study of Negro college women only eight said they would agree to an abortion and 25 would place the baby for adoption.

I didn't have the baby in my home town.  The town to which I went was not strange to me.  I had the baby there because I found out that the cost would be less than in my home town.  Then too, the hospital has an out-patient clinic which gave prenatal care very cheap.

I had decided to keep the baby even before I ever had it.  When I first went to the doctor, he asked: "Do you want the baby?"  I told him this:  "I didn't want it before I got it, but now that I have it, I may as well want and keep it."  I kept my baby because I felt that God would make a way for me to take care of it.  I had gotten into the place of a mother, so I thought I had better play the part of a mother.  My reasons and feelings for not giving away my baby can't be easily explained.  I really don't know why I didn't give my baby away.  I guess it was because I loved it(10).

I had waited for nine months to see what it was and looked like, so I couldn't give it up.  Now I have the baby I love it more and more.  I don't date no fellows that want me to neglect my baby for them.

    Lucy is not clear about why she decided to keep her baby.  Now she is talking to us from the self-conscious perspective and assumed rationality of the college setting.  Yet in her frank expressions she reveals the rationale of the woman of her class.  The baby is a natural part of her; motherhood is intrinsically good; God will provide; she loves the baby; motherhood proves that she is a "real woman."

    Lucy's brief confessional tells us some things about the social problems of unwed motherhood that are obscured by the comparative statistics of incidence or by survey research data.  In many instances illegitimacy stands as the visible symbol of decisions that are made in a matrix of cultural discontinuities and value conflicts that may be more severe for deprived minorities than for other members of the society.  Lucy confronted four such crises of decision before becoming an unwed mother:  (1) to engage or not to engage in premarital coitus, (2) to practice or not to practice contraception, (3) to secure or not to secure an abortion, and (4) to place or not to place the baby for adoption.  Each decision was not only a crisis for Lucy, but also an opportunity for the "society" to intervene on behalf of its opposition to unwed motherhood.  Yet the very opportunities to intervene in support of premarital contraception or abortion themselves constitute grave societal crises.

*Sociation Today would like to thank Leslie Hurt for his research on Joseph Himes and for locating this article. The article was written in 1966, when the author was Professor in the Department of Sociology at North Carolina Central University.  It has not been previously published.

(1)Joseph S. Himes, "Some Reactions to a Hypothetical Premarital Pregnancy by 100 Negro College Women," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 26:346, table, p. 345, (August, 1964).
Return to the Text

(2)Some current research on Negro illegitimacy has produced a lively dialogue regarding the relative influence of traditional middle-class and sub lower-class sex moralities.  The literature is not conclusive on this point.  It seems likely that with reference to many issues and decisions the relevant norms of urban lower-class Negroes are pluralistic.  Decisions and action in such issues as premarital coitus, contraception and retention or release of the baby may be influenced by factors like availability of alternatives, short-run vs. long-run goals, primary and secondary group pressures, etc., all operating in pluralistic cultural matrix.
Return to Text

(3)Hylan G. Lewis, "Culture, Class and the Behavior of Low Income Families," Child Rearing Study, Health and Welfare Council of the National Capitol Area, Washington, D.C., unpublished, p. 26.
Return to the Text

(4)Clark E. Vincent has shown that unwed mothers reveal a wide range of attitudes toward premarital coitus.  See Unmarried Mothers, Free Press of Glencoe, 1961, pp. 31-51.
Return to the Text

(5)Paul H. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion, New York, Harper, 1958, p. 154, ff.
Return to the Text

(6)The fact of Lucy’s isolation diverges from the finding of Hallowell Pope and associates in the "Unwed Mother Project," Introductory Material for Chapter IV Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina.  These investigators reported that only a minority of Negro women had an affair that led to unwed motherhood while in isolation from their normal social environment.
Return to the Text

(7)Under North Carolina law a divorce action can be instituted after two years of separation.  If the action is not contested, divorce is usually granted in a routine fashion.
Return to the Text

(8)Joseph S. Himes, Op. Cit., pp. 345-346.  Hallowell Pope et. al., Op. Cit., pp. 119-120, also 115.
Return to the Text

(9)See Joseph S. Himes, Op. Cit., Table, p. 345.
Return to the Text

(10)explaining the reluctance of lower-class urban women to relinquish their illegitimate children, Frazier observed:  "The birth of a child imposes certain obligations upon the mother because the mores."
Return to the Text
 
 

 Return to Sociation Today Spring/Summer 2010