Article on the significance of Detroit’s Crittenton General Hospital

Crittenton General Hospital of Detroit, MIchigan, my birthplace

Last week, I submitted a story to the Michigan Historical Society for consideration in their bi-monthly publication Michigan History Magazine. Their editorial committee agreed to review my piece that examines the history of Crittenton General Hospital and the five Crittenton mission facilities in Detroit. During its decades of operation, the hospital became the primary center for delivering infants to single mothers in Michigan and later for placing those infants for adoption after the mid-1940s.

My article draws from research and writings on the Crittenton organization and historic research surrounding adoption, adoption demographics, adoption secrecy, adoption laws, and adoption advocacy for adoptees, who numbers in the millions.

Opened in 1929 and then closed in 1974, it was one of the nation’s largest and most important maternity hospitals during its decades of operation. It played a major role in caring for single, unmarried mothers. Its historic significance is tied to its role promoting the adoption of thousands of “illegitimate” Michiganders, like me, who who were born out of marriage and placed for adoption from the late 1940s through 1974 because of their status as children conceived out of marriage.

My article accomplishes two goals:

• It shows why the hospital is important historically: I make public its once primary mission of serving unwed, pregnant woman and their babies that remains hidden from public view. Ongoing efforts to gloss over its true past deny adoptees of their history and legitimacy and continue to support the stigma of single-mother births that prevailed during the time that the Crittenton Hospital operated.
• It shows why the hospital’s story matters to the history of U.S. adoption and adoptee rights issues: I highlight its historic importance to give adoptees and birth mothers acknowledgement to their role in the history of this country and the treatment of illegitimacy, women, and, yes, bastard children who were not born “legitimately.” It also shows how those who run the hospital’s successor today continue to promote the stigma associated with illegitimacy and adoption by not formally acknowledging Crittenton General’s historic services.

Even if the historical society chooses to pass on this piece, I will bring the hospital’s story to the public through other publications, through my forthcoming memoir, and on my memoir’s web platform. It is simply too important of a story to be forgotten, because the people born there and the mothers who gave birth there still matter when we talk about adoption and human rights for all adoptees.