Like McQuade, many birth mothers can't shake their anguish and guilt when Mother's Day rolls around each May, so they've taken on the Saturday before the holiday as their own - Birth Mother's Day. The day was established by a group of Seattle birth mothers in 1990, and has grown over the years to include candle lightings, poetry readings, and other events around the country.
"The old myth about adoption was that birth mothers would go and have their children and forget it ever happened and the adoptees wouldn't care where they came from," said the 62-year-old McQuade, who was reunited with her daughter 12 years ago. "We know that it doesn't really happen that way. We have a much better sense of it now. Birth Mother's Day is a healing for many."
With an estimated 6 million adoptees in the United States and a trend toward more open adoptions, birth mothers have never been more out of the closet, forming support groups and sharing resources as they struggle with sadness and a sense that society has left them in the shadows.
Many birth mothers relinquished newborns in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, when closed adoptions that sealed records and left them with little control seemed the only choice. Now, birth mothers looking to reconnect with their children are finding that state laws aren't making it easy.
Forty-two states require a court order to open original birth certificates that often list the names of birth mothers. Eight states allow adult adoptees to have copies of original birth certificates.
When Holly Spann, 55, of Nashville went looking for the daughter she gave birth to in 1971, she had no clues to point her in the right direction.
"I didn't have a piece of paper, a court document, anything to prove I had had a baby except stretch marks and the memories," she said.
Spann got pregnant at 17. She left her small town in Tennessee to live with relatives in Alabama while waiting to give birth, grieving for years over the closed adoption. Celebrating Birth Mother's Day is her way of acknowledging the past.
"Back then, birth mothers were basically told you'll go on with your lives just like it never happened," she said. "The fact that you gave a child up for adoption was really never to be spoken about again."
