In this meticulously researched book, Gabrielle Glaser gives her readers a detailed and empathetic portrait of adoption in twentieth-century America. Glaser centers her writing on the experiences of Margaret Erle and the baby boy she gave up for adoption in 1961, following the impact of this decision across countries and upon generations of families. The history that she uncovers is often discomfiting, and often simply cruel; parents, doctors, and service workers considered it more important to uphold the standards of propriety and social engineering than to provide care.
After fifteen-year-old Margaret begins a romance with high school classmate George Katz, much to both their parents’ disapproval, she becomes pregnant after losing her virginity. Her mother places her in Lakeview, a home for unwed pregnant women. After the baby, David, is born, Margaret and George insist on raising him themselves, until a social worker threatens Margaret with juvenile delinquency. The rest of the story follows David’s experience as an adoptee and the eventual reunification of mother and son.
Glaser’s writing about adoption also depicts the broader cultural history of the North American Jewish community. Erle’s story begins with a family traumatized by their escape from the Nazis and the pressures of starting over again in a new country. Both the young birth parents and the older adoptive parents (who are also Holocaust survivors) find themselves at the mercy of the institutions established by New York’s wealthy Jewish elite. The decades immediately following the war were full of opportunity for bright, aspiring young Jewish adults, but upward social and economic mobility also had costs.
The book does not shy away from the identity crises from which adopted children often suffer. Even as Glaser acknowledges the love that adopted families share, this is not a warm and fuzzy tale from the cabbage patch. With the end of the book focusing on advocacy work being done by and on behalf of adopted children (and those who are now adults), Glaser succeeds at pointing out the impact of past adoption practices and how they continue to resonate today.
The emotional charge of Glaser’s writing gives it a sense of urgency, and the stories she tells will deeply resonate with readers.
Debby Miller is a long-time board member of Jewish Book Council, serving on its Fiction committee, and later founding the National Jewish Book Award for Book Clubs. She is currently a Vice President of the organization. Debby is based in Greensboro, NC and has been involved in the Jewish community through National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), AIPAC, B’nai Shalom and the Federation. She was president of the local Women’s Division and campaign chair, and also got involved in the National Women’s Division. One of her primary philanthropic endeavors is her work with JDC, where she has been a member of the board since 1994.
Discussion Questions
Courtesy of Gabrielle Glaser
- Every family is built on a series of interrelationships that everyone understands — or at least thinks they do. When reunions like David’s and Margaret’s occur, the process of entirely reimagining the family structure is often fraught. Imagine members of your family suddenly discovering they had an additional child or sibling. Adoptees, meanwhile, meet an entirely new branch of family who are unknown but deeply imagined. What that might be like? How would you and your close relatives feel about meeting and accepting another branch of your family tree? How would you feel meeting siblings and cousins you never knew existed?
- AMERICAN BABY is a book with many layers. It examines Margaret’s story as a young Jewish woman in New York City most fully, but it also explores a period in which the ability of young women to control their own lives was limited by law; medicine; and societal norms. If you did experience those pre-Pill, pre-Roe years as a young woman, what is it like to reflect on your own choices about dating and sex? If you are in a younger generation, could you imagine coming of age in those years? Do you ever discuss the expectations of women in the 1950s and 60s?
- This book challenges the longstanding narrative about closed adoptions of the postwar years — that it was in the best interests of everyone involved, and that the social engineering of adoption would be seamless. The adopted sons and daughters would grow up in families that welcomed them, and the shamed unwed pregnant girls could forever forget their shame. To what extent did learning about Margaret’s and David’s experiences change your view? If so, how?
- In an era in which many in the U.S. society are shifting language to reflect a more sensitive inclusion of race and gender, adoptees are still fighting for changes in the most basic terms. Many birth parents — who until the 1980s were often referred to as “real parents” — now prefer the terms “natural parents” or “first parents.” People who were adopted often prefer the phrase “adopted person” over “adoptee.” Many of those adopted during the period this book covers, now middle-aged adults, object when they are described as “babies” or “children” rather than sons and daughters. How do you feel about such changes in terminology? Do they change how you see adoption?
- The Nazis’ slaughter of six million European Jews is the historical backdrop for the Erle, Katz, and Rosenberg families. The losses suffered by Margaret’s and George’s parents — of family members, of a culture, of a birthplace — are central to their identity. How does the weight of history play out in the lives of this very ordinary people trying to survive in a country and culture very different from where they had been born? And what do you think they told themselves about surrendering their firstborn grandson?
- Judaism has a codified set of rituals aimed at helping mourners grieve the loss of loved ones, from pre-burial mourning to shiva; from shloshim to the first year. Margaret and George lost a son, but he was not dead, and their families did not recognize his disappearance. Psychologists describe the kind of mourning Margaret and George experienced as “disenfranchised grief,” one that is not recognized by society. Many people experience losses that are difficult to acknowledge, including miscarriages, or the stigmatized deaths of loved ones due to suicide or overdoses. Yet there are few support systems and traditions in place for those experiencing disenfranchised grief. Have you ever felt a loss that those around you did not acknowledge? How did you cope with it?
- It’s clear today that neither nature nor nurture shape us entirely. The Rosenbergs, for example, taught David the liturgical traditions of Central European Jewry, at which he excelled. In a parallel development, his birth sister Cheri Rose Katz became a successful opera singer in Europe. How are ways in which nature and nurture have combined to shape your work life? Your talents? Do you think one outweighs the other?
- Tens of thousands of human beings are created every year in the United States with the help of third-party eggs and/or sperm. Typically, these donors are anonymous, chosen from books with short bios, medical history, and a photo or two. Many conceived using those methods are already asking about their biological origins, and wish to know their genetic parent. What rights do you think they have to locate the person whose DNA they share?
- Margaret is buoyed by her faith, and has been throughout her life. Despite losing David twice, she takes great solace in knowing Kim, Sam, Noah and Estee, and sometimes thinks about the chance meeting with Rabbi Geller’s granddaughter she had at the Berlin synagogue. Have you ever experienced a surprising encounter of geography or circumstance? An unexpected connection or run-in? What was it?
