Column
A brief history of the changes in services for unwed moms
in the US
From the Elizabeth Lund Home for Friendless Women to the Lund Family Center: A brief history of the changes in services for unwed moms from facility based to community based, in one American community
Ellen Furnari (MSW, Consultant of Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network)
▲ Ellen Furnari
When the Elizabeth Lund Home for Friendless Women was first started in the late 1800’s, in the US, it provided a place for unmarried women to come and live, in secret, until they delivered their babies, gave them up for adoption, and went back out in to the community as if this had never happened. The house was hidden behind huge hedges and mail from women at the home was sent to an address far away, before being sent on to the recipient, so that the women’s actual location could not be known. The women never had to leave, medical care, including delivery was provided on site. When I first learned that the original name of the institution included the phrase “Friendless Women” I felt heartbroken. This is how people thought about unwed pregnant women at the time – about 120 years ago.
By the time I first worked as a social work student intern at the Home in the early 1980’s, it had been transformed in many ways. The building had been rebuilt, and was easily accessible. Mail was not routed elsewhere. Women went out to the doctor’s offices and to the hospital to deliver their children. But more significantly, most of the women who stayed at the home, raised their children. The number of women who relinquished their children was quite small. There had been a huge change in America in the 100 years since the Home’s founding. Most of the pregnant women who stayed there simply needed a safe and secure place during their pregnancies and some support for various concerns and issues they faced. Within a month or so of giving birth, they moved back in to the community with their babies. The majority of unwed mothers in the US, by that time, did not make use of a facility like this, and the vast majority raised their children, like any mom would.
By the time I actually worked there, 5 years later, further changes had taken place. By then only the most vulnerable women actually lived in the building. There was no more Lund Home, but now there was the Lund Family Center, reflecting that few of the people served by the program, used the building as a home. The Family Center offered childcare programs, parenting education, help finishing school, job training, counseling, and various other programs for families. While the focus was still on serving more vulnerable families, it was no longer exclusively focused on unwed mothers. Families need support for many different reasons related to life experiences of parents, special needs of children, economic needs, life transitions…. So many reasons.
This shift reflected that almost all mothers lived in the community and did not want to live in a special home for unwed mothers. They did not perceive themselves as any different than other mothers in similar situations. They did not want or need a special facility. Some married families need help with housing or childcare. Some parents need job training, or scholarships to finish university. Some parents need parent education or counseling due to their own difficult childhoods. Some parents need support when their partner leaves them and they find themselves suddenly raising their children as a single parent. Unwed mothers are just parents, like all parents, they and their children are just families like all families.
While many of the programs of the Lund Family Center continued to be offered at the building, there were also programs out in the community. Staff from the center ran play groups and mothers groups in different neighborhoods and offered parent education groups in various other community centers. Counselors and nurses visited families in their homes, not expecting everyone to come to the center. Staff found it both respectful to go to people’s homes, but also helpful in understanding the kinds of support a family needed.
In order for the Lund Family Center to truly serve the people in the community, they had to change. Rather than trying to get unwed mothers to want to stay in their facility, they had to develop the services and programs that families wanted and needed. And they learned to offer them in the ways and places that made them most accessible to these families.
I know that Korea is in the midst of huge social transformation in terms of the roles of women, women in the workforce, ideas of what it means to be a parent, changes in the roles of mother and fathers, the very definition of what is a family. I hope this brief story of my experiences of changes in America is useful. We too have gone through huge social change.
