Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self Book Review

Full disclosure: I was given a free advance reader copy of this book by Books Forward in exchange for an honest review.

Adoption stories have always been compelling to me. Even though I’ve never experienced that myself, I’ve found it fascinating that plenty of people have had a different family from the one that they were born into. What rarely crosses my mind regarding these tales is about the birth parents, specifically about the birth mother. What were the circumstances? How did they feel about giving up their child? Did they ever find them? Today’s wonderful subject Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self by Tracy Mayo made me consider what it was like to be a birth mother pre Roe vs. Wade.

Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self is a memoir about a woman who had to give up her child for adoption. In 1970, 14-year-old Tracy was the only child of a high-ranking naval officer and a socially ambitious mother. After 8 different moves, she longed for a normal life, one filled with friends and feeling rooted. Instead, she got pregnant at that age and was exiled to a maternity home. There, she gave birth to a boy, but she was forced to bear the guilt and shame of being an unwed mother. On top of that, she had to surrender her child and pretend that it never happened. Twenty-two years later, with her longing still undiminished, Tracy set out to find him and perhaps, to reclaim herself.

The book is divided into three parts. The first two, labeled “Dazed” and “Lost,” deal with the events before and up to 20 years after her pregnancy. It’s these sections that were kind of hard to get through because of how much I felt sorry for her that she had to go through that. When her parents found out that Tracy was pregnant, they put her in a maternity home because that’s what people did when their daughters were having children before getting married prior to Roe vs. Wade. This didn’t make it any better as Tracy recounts. She expressed her grievances towards both her dad and mom for this. With her dad, it was him who made the formal decision without even consulting her, yet she’s more forgiving towards him because he was a problem-solver due to his military background. Tracy had a harder time with her mother because she was the one who told her, “Tracy, we agreed never to say the name of that place out loud, don’t forget. Some things can never be discussed. You were never there” (p. 125).

In other words, her mother wanted her to forget about the baby, maternity home, and her pregnancy overall. It didn’t help that Tracy’s mother wanted her to be the daughter that Tracy knew that she never could be.

Prior to reading this book, I’d only heard about maternity homes. Mayo paints a dreary atmosphere while describing her time in one. Apparently, the pregnant girls and ones who just gave birth lived on separate floors. The former had to restrict their time outside the home to limit the risk of public exposure. That same group also had to go on diets, which only allowed them to gain half a pound a week, so it’d be easier to lose the baby fat after they gave birth. I’ve never been pregnant, yet I was like, “What?!”

It was difficult for Tracy to forget about what she went through. She recalls taking a bunch of drugs like LSD in the Duke Forest while she studied medicine at Duke University. She later utilized meditations to cope with her trauma, and at one point, she had a vision of her son whom she named Thomas. In one, she asks him what has happened to him, and he reveals certain things like an accident, in which he got burned when he was 10 years old (p. 143-150). 

The third and final part is called “Found,” which details how Tracy found her son and she reconnected with him. She started her research in 1992 before the Internet. This meant going to various archives, including Old Dominion University, which housed records from the maternity home she was at and consulting a person called The Searcher. I can imagine how difficult it would’ve been to research where her son would’ve been at or if he was even alive. She even got in contact with the search and support group Adoptee-Birthparent Support Network (ABSN), who gave her important advice when dealing with family services. The love for this organization is very clear because of how helpful they were and how they validated her experiences.

She hit some dead ends with her research and had to deal with certain social workers. One even went on a tone-deaf rant about how it’s hard to get pregnant; how Tracy was lucky to have a baby; how sons don’t always try to find their birthparents; and how there were not enough infants available for adoption, especially healthy white ones. Again, I was like, “What?!”

Regardless, when Tracy finally discovered her son’s whereabouts and was able to connect with him a year later in 1992, it felt so satisfying. Her son, now named David, seems like a wonderful guy. She portrays him as a good man who was raised in a loving, albeit flawed family. Tracy is able to bond with him with no problem.

Childless Mother certainly made me rethink adoption reunion stories. At one point, when Tracy bonds with David, he mentions to her that sons don’t try to find their birthparents, echoing what the vapid social worker said. At that moment, I realized that he was right. Many of the stories I read about adoptees attempting to find their birth mother or father were usually the daughters. The only one that I can think of, in which the son tried to do that was Son of Harpo Speaks by Bill Marx (the adopted son of comedian Harpo Marx), and that was just a subplot.

Here, it’s the entire story of a birthmother finding her son and then some. Most adoption tales end after the adoptee finds the birth parent, yet Mayo wanted to stress how she and her son maintained a relationship over the years. After she and David get to know each other, he starts living in her home after she divorces her second husband. Tracy also describes how he integrated into her life after they reunited. This includes dating her friends, who are older than him. This makes her judge him which I thought was intriguing because her mother used to do the same thing.

Again, while I’m not an adoptee nor had to give up a child for adoption, I can see how a story like this can strongly impact people who have experienced that in some form. Mayo is personable and emphatic with her writing. She paints a clear picture of the trauma first and then how she dealt with it over the years. She admits that some of her decisions weren’t the wisest, but she perseveres. People might cry while reading it, but feel happy when Tracy reclaims her story of being a mother.

Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self by Tracy Mayo considers the life of a birth mother in effective and realistic ways. Mayo’s writing is honest and emphatic while painting realistic pictures of the relationships she’s had as well as the environments she’s been in. On top of that, it makes it painfully clear that no person should’ve gone through what Tracy did when she was pregnant. I am and other readers will be happy to know that she was able to reclaim her story. I would recommend it to anybody who’s willing to read it, yet I suggest it to those who are adoptees and/or birthparents the most. The book will be out on Thursday, March 28, so get it wherever you can.

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