A 1974 article from the Detroit Free Press on the closing of my birthplace, Crittenton General Hospital of Detroit, fails to mention the thousands of adoptees who were born and relinquished here in the decades after World War II.
I have published an article that examines a widespread practice of hiding the history of the U.S. adoption system and how it operated nationally in every state in the decades after World War II. Those who promoted adoption include millions of family members, religious organizations like the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army, social service groups that served single mothers, mainstream religious leaders and churches, doctors, some medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, hospitals that delivered the infants, and the profession of social work, whose practitioners managed and promoted the adoption system for decades.
Yet the roles of adoption institutions are whitewashed and omitted in most accounts that most of the public will read from these groups’ publications and on online sources. My research that I highlight in greater detail in my book indicates this pattern of historical inaccuracy is intentional, in order to hide their complicity in promoting a system that separated families. For most of those impacted, this has been and remains a lifetime separation because of discriminatory laws sealing adoption records.