Burning of the Marriage Hat

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- She was 17, pregnant and alone in a small town in Wyoming in the 1960s. Unwed and beginning to show, she felt like she had committed a felony. She was forced to hide then give her child up for adoption. Many of the six million U.S. women who have given children up for adoption today have similar stories. They went into hiding and many of them still remain in hiding today, says author Margaret Benshoof-Holler, whose book Burning of the Marriage Hat chronicles her own experience of giving a child up for adoption in the 1960s and the process that brought her out of hiding to tell the world her story.

Stigmas forced unwed pregnant women into maternity homes to hide and then coerced them to give their children up for adoption during the 1960's. They had a child one day, signed the relinquishment paper the next. The following day they were home again where the loss of a child was never talked about again in many families. The slate was wiped clean of the experience of motherhood for most of these women. Stories like "she was in Europe" or "visiting an aunt in New York" kept the denial of the experience going for many years for a large number of birthmothers.

Stigmas still linger today in many places when single welfare mothers are forced to marry. We often see them underlying the messages of politicians who push for adoption or marriage as end-all solutions to the problem of unwed pregnant women.

Writing a book changed author Margaret's life. It helped her overcome the stigmas and face the world as a birthmother. She encourages other women to do the same to help educate the world about the conditions of unwed pregnant women. Burning of the Marriage Hat is based on the author's own account of coming of age and getting pregnant out-of-wedlock in 1960's Wyoming whose motto is the "Equality State" because that's where women first gained the right to vote and sit on juries in the U.S. In her book, the author returns to her Wyoming roots to find knowledge and healing.

Margaret Benshoof-Holler is a journalist, a writer of fiction and poetry, and a teacher. She has worked as a freelance writer and op ed columnist for various newspapers and magazines including the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner. She lived and taught in Boulder, Colorado, Jakarta, Indonesia, Malmo, Sweden, and Madrid, Spain before moving to San Francisco where she currently writes and teaches at City College of San Francisco.

The author has been featured on WBAI 99.5 FM Pacifica Radio "Arts Magazine" in New York City; NPR affiliate KALW, 91.7FM in San Francisco, CA; KPFA 94.1 FM "Cover to Cover" in Berkeley, CA; San Francisco's KGO AM 810 morning news; FM 107 WFMP Radio's Lorie & Julia Show in St. Paul, MN; WBEB FM's "The Women's File" in Philadelphia, PA; KMPS-FM morning news, Seattle, WA; "Women's Voices" on KZYX-91.5 FM Radio in Mendocino, CA, and "Today's Women" on WGNY-AM in New Windsor, New York. She has also been featured on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network cable channel 34's "Woman's Connection (sm) in New York, NY" and NPR affiliate WFSS 91.9 FM's "Women's Voices, Women's Lives," in Fayetteville, NC.

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