{"id":29,"date":"2026-08-18T16:34:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T16:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2026\/?p=29"},"modified":"2026-09-09T21:37:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T21:37:34","slug":"inheriting-lost-lineage-the-aftermath-of-u-s-maternity-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2026\/inheriting-lost-lineage-the-aftermath-of-u-s-maternity-homes\/","title":{"rendered":"Inheriting Lost Lineage: the Aftermath of U.S. Maternity Homes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For decades, a nationwide network of institutions erased the identities of 1.5 million mothers and their children. Now, through a paper trail of medical files and documents, women like Kyla Selsor are piecing things back together.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Little Rock, Arkansas Florence Crittenton Home on March 7th, 2026. Photo by Sophie McDougall.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kyla Selsor was not invited to her mother\u2019s funeral. She was not listed in the obituary. She was not sitting beside her siblings in the funeral pews when her mother, Carolyn Ann Duke, was laid to rest in the spring of 1998.<\/p>\n

Six years prior, Selsor had ignored her family\u2019s wishes and married a Black man. That choice led to a complete cut off of communication, specifically by her older brother, who happened to be funding the funeral. He refused to include Selsor on the list of relatives.<\/p>\n

Still, Selsor was desperate to say goodbye to her mother. In hopes of persuading the funeral director to allow her attendance, she expedited a new version of her birth certificate to her house. Her original document, printed on a sleek yellow paper, was slightly smeared and hard to decipher. She hoped that with a new printed document \u2014 clear proof of her biological relationship to her mother \u2014 she would be allowed to attend.<\/p>\n

$65 and a few days later, a newly printed certificate arrived. Selsor scanned the document, but her eyes latched onto a line of small black type on the bottom left side.<\/p>\n

What stuck out to her that day didn\u2019t have to do with her age or her name or her birthplace. It had to do with one statistical tally: \u201cPrevious Deliveries to Mother (Do Not Include this birth)\u00a04<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

For thirty-two years, Selsor believed she was the third-born child \u2014 which meant that number should have been two. But the certificate was clear: four previous deliveries. \u201cI was absolutely emotionally, physically, spiritually exasperated,\u201d Kyla recalled. Four previous deliveries meant that two children were missing from the family tree. So where were these other two children? And what else had her mother been hiding?<\/p>\n

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Selsor (left), Duke (center), and the two other siblings she grew up with, approx. 1976. Photo by Sophie McDougall, original photo provided by Kyla Selsor.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Those questions would follow her for the next three decades as she searched for birth records, medical documents, family trees, and DNA tests to try to answer them. They would also be the same questions I would ask her during our first phone call, almost 28 years later, on a late afternoon in October of 2025.<\/p>\n

That day, Selsor told me about a large red brick building in Little Rock, Arkansas, now standing barren with closed blinds and barbed wire lining the fence around the perimeter. It was once far from empty, housing countless unwed girls during their premarital pregnancies.\u00a0<\/em>These stays often resulted in the pressured relinquishment of their newborn children \u2014 an experience so emotionally intense that many women, like her mother, carried the secret to their graves.<\/p>\n

This house was just one branch of a nationwide network of American maternity homes called Florence Crittenton Homes.<\/em>\u00a0From their start in 1883 until the mid-late 20th century, there were approximately\u00a073 homes<\/a>\u00a0across the country. They were advertised and treated as charities for young pregnant women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world of children having children is a world without goals, a world without vision\u2026 The Florence Crittenton Home offers a change in that world,\u201d a Florence Crittenton Home flyer from the Arkansas location read, with a cover featuring the dark silhouette of a pregnant woman in a window. \u201cThe Door is Open\u201d was printed in white letters underneath the image. On the back page of the flyer, they requested donations.<\/p>\n

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An Undated Florence Crittenton, Little Rock Arkansas Flyer. Photo by Sophie McDougall, Courtesy of the Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Different forms of maternity institutions and programs that perpetuated forced adoption have existed globally for centuries in\u00a0Spain<\/a>,\u00a0Ireland<\/a>,\u00a0Germany<\/a>, and\u00a0Argentina<\/a>, just to name a few.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Spain<\/a>, from the 1930\u2019s to the 90\u2019s, as many as\u00a0300,000<\/a>\u00a0newborns were separated from their mothers and placed into the arms of families loyal to dictator Francisco Franco.\u00a0Germany<\/a>\u00a0had the Lebensborn program, which targeted unmarried, pregnant, \u201cAryan\u201d women, discouraging the women from abortions, hoping to expand the births of the \u201cracially elite.\u201d In\u00a0Argentina<\/a>\u00a0between 1956 and 1980, two midwives set up a child trafficking network, selling at least 40 babies to adoptive parents and falsifying their birth certificates.<\/p>\n

It took years for these unethical systems to be investigated. But most Americans have yet to fully confront the inner workings of their own institutions.<\/p>\n

For decades, systems like Florence Crittenton Homes were an unspoken but institutionalized practice, where an estimated 1.5 million girls surrendered their children, and then returned to their previous lives, pressured by the system and often too traumatized to ever say a word. This silence, pain, and secrecy continues to impact generations to this day, as people like Selsor try to solve, and share the homes\u2019 impacts. Today, a new generation of researchers and survivors are fueled by the same clinical evidence that haunted Selsor on the day her birth certificate arrived. They are using DNA technology, persistent investigation, and the stories of the women who were once held inside, to dismantle a century of institutional silence.<\/p>\n

Recent legislation is only pushing us further into the past. The federal constitutional right to abortion was eliminated in 2022. Today, abortions are illegal in Arkansas, along with 13 other states across the country.\u00a0Modern maternity homes<\/a>\u00a0have increased 23% in the past four years. The nation is currently returning to the legal frameworks of an era we have yet to fully acknowledge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In order for Selsor to even think about finding her lost siblings, she first needed to grasp how the homes functioned.<\/p>\n

The first Florence Crittenton home opened in New York City in 1883. Right on Bleecker Street, in downtown Manhattan, a man named Charles Crittenton felt he had found his evangelical purpose: assisting unwed mothers.<\/p>\n

Maternity homes, however, were not his first business venture. Crittenton moved to New York City in 1854 to work as a music teacher, but after being offered a job as a clerk at a drug company, he quickly changed paths. He opened his own drug business in 1861, and by 1893, it was valued at $800,000. That\u2019s equivalent to over $28 million today.<\/p>\n

At the same time that his business and finances were thriving, Crittenton was grieving his personal life. His wife died in 1882, followed by his daughter, Florence, who died at just four years old. His grief of their death brought him to Christianity. He quickly converted and began attending prayer meetings where he met evangelist Smith Allen. It was Allen who one day invited Crittenton to tour the so-called \u2018red light district\u2019 in New York City. This area referred to the span from Times Square to 42nd Street, where sex shops and prostitution were prominent. Crittenton was shocked by the prostitutes\u2019 lifestyles, specifically with the idea that they had no other options, both for income and shelter.<\/p>\n

His revelation launched him into a solution: founding that first ever Bleecker Street home, named after his late daughter. The first home aimed to help an assortment of \u201cfallen women,\u201d including those who had committed sins of sex, gambling, alcohol, and prostitution. The mission was to preach salvation and hope through Christian evangelism.<\/p>\n

But things didn\u2019t truly take off until\u00a0Dr. Kate Waller Barrett<\/a>\u00a0came into the picture. Barrett, a physician from Virginia, had a separate experience that brought her to feel moved to help unmarried, pregnant girls.<\/p>\n

After marrying a reverend and having a child of her own, Barrett didn\u2019t have the best outlook on unmarried mothers. They were sinners, after all. But one cold, winter night, a young unmarried girl with a baby showed up at Barrett\u2019s door. Barrett recalled being surprisingly moved by the young girl\u2019s situation. According to the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries\u00a0Social Welfare History Project<\/a>, Barrett explained her empathetic revelation: \u201cAlmost unknown to myself, there entered into my heart\u2026a covenant with God that, so long as I lived, in my voice would always be lifted in behalf of this outcast class and my hand always held out to aid them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrett was aware of Crittenton\u2019s work, and in 1893 the two connected in Atlanta, Georgia. Crittenton confessed his dream of starting a national network of homes just like the Florence Crittenton mission, and Barrett hopped right on board.<\/p>\n

From there, the two began a national tour, preaching evangelical Christian attitudes towards unwed mothers. They aimed to bring attention to the sins of prostitution, and in 1895, the national network, the\u00a0National Florence Crittenton Mission<\/a>, was established. Just two years later, there were fifty-one Florence Crittenton homes across the country.<\/p>\n

Each home operated under the same charter, but were primarily autonomous, governed by their own board, and responsible for their own funding. By 1898 Congress granted a national charter to the Mission, supporting their authority to provide shelter to women and girls who had \u201cbeen betrayed from the path of virtue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charles Crittenton and Kate Waller Barrett allegedly preached the need to assist women who had strayed from Christianity. They tailored their mission as a form of social work, at a time when unmarried pregnant women were a failure of God. But as they were emphasizing the needs of these homes, they were simultaneously perpetuating them as the only option.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy granny used to say the path to hell was paved with good intentions,\u201d said Selsor, referring to Crittenton and Barrett. \u201cAnd I think that this is a very good example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other branches of unwed mother institutions also existed across America during the same time. The\u00a0Salvation Army<\/a>\u00a0owned 15. Others existed within orphanages or the Catholic Church, run by Nuns. Unmarried girls were sent to these institutions during their pregnancy, explicitly, to hide. After their births, they were told to go back to their lives and move on.<\/p>\n

Selsor\u2019s mom, Carolyn Ann Duke, was one of these women. The Florence Crittenton Home network expanded to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1903, when Charles Crittenton held a series of meetings in the city\u2019s churches. By 1904, Little Rock\u00a0Florence Crittenton H<\/a>ome location opened and began taking their first \u201cclients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Understanding the inner workings of the Florence Crittenton Homes are not simple. \u201cI had such a hard time understanding what was going on,\u201d said Selsor as she recalled the beginning of her search process. Most homes went through massive shifts and changes throughout their time being open. It is imperative to understand how the institutions evolved in order to understand the direct impact on the women themselves. Not everyone had the same experience. Timing was key.<\/p>\n

During the first few decades of the Arkansas home, most of the women chose to mother their own children, hoping that the home would help them prepare to reenter society after their sins. This sentiment didn\u2019t last forever though, and soon enough, people began to reevaluate the homes\u2019 intended purpose.<\/p>\n

After only six years of operation, the institution began to face political backlash. During a City Council meeting in 1910, Mayor William R. Duley explained his concerns for the staff\u2019s \u201canti-prostitution attitudes.\u201d In 1916, a fire destroyed the new building recently acquired for the home. Foul play was suspected.<\/p>\n

After World War II, the Little Rock Florence Crittenton Home began to publicly encourage their clients to give their children up for adoption, rather than mother them themselves. Selsor\u2019s mother, according to documents, was confined to the home in 1953.<\/p>\n

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Archives of Flyers from Little Rock, Arkansas FCH. Photo by Sophie McDougall, Courtesy of the Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, in the 1940s and 50s, \u201cwhite women who were single and pregnant were diagnosed as mentally ill and deemed unfit to be mothers; they were told, however, that they could achieve rehabilitation by relinquishing their babies to a thriving adoption market.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Rickie Solinger, a leading historian of reproductive justice, these homes represented a system larger than just providing shelter for girls in need, like they advertised. The institutions were performing a specific type of social surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a girl living in Arkansas in 1920 got pregnant without having a husband, this was seen as a mark of her sexually disordered mind, of her low intelligence,\u201d Solinger explained.<\/p>\n

In Solinger\u2019s research, the pregnancy wasn\u2019t the only \u201cproblem\u201d being solved \u2014 it was the woman\u2019s status in a racially stratified society. While the homes were advertised as sanctuaries, Solinger noted that they were tailored almost exclusively to white women. In an era of rigid segregation and eugenics, white Christian girls were not supposed to be \u201cfallen.\u201d This even further pushed the need for white women to enter these homes if their baby was half-Black; a suspicion Selsor holds for her own mother\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything about putting these girls into maternity homes was a way of defining whiteness\u2026 \u201c said Solinger. \u201c[White babies] were a very, very hot commodity\u2026 sexuality and female sexuality in particular was a very important route for defining whiteness.\u201d<\/p>\n

By \u201ccuring\u201d the white mother through hiding her away, doing chores, and the forced relinquishment of her child, the system allowed her to return to society with her racial and social status ostensibly scrubbed clean.<\/p>\n

For Selsor, looking back at her mother\u2019s life, the \u201ccure\u201d was an uneven burden of guilt. \u201cThere was no accountability for the person who was getting them pregnant, right?\u201d Selsor asked. \u201cAnd so they carried this shame throughout their entire life for doing what biologically is normal for us as human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

That female targeted shame is what fueled the silence of the 1950s and 60s. Between 1945 and 1973, an estimated\u00a04 million<\/a>\u00a0mothers in the U.S. surrendered their newborns for adoption. By the mid-1960s,\u00a080 to 90<\/a>\u00a0percent of white unwed mothers who entered maternity homes ended up relinquishing their children.<\/p>\n

Internal archives from the Little Rock branch, located at the\u00a0Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art<\/a>, reveal that the home\u2019s downfall was a slow financial collapse. In the early 1960s, the Arkansas home relied on community donations to maintain their budget. Later that decade, fixed costs for the massive West 11th Street property began to outrun the income generated by resident fees. This forced the home into a dangerous dependency on community grants; any shortfall immediately threatened the facility\u2019s operations.<\/p>\n

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Arkansas Florence Crittenton Home 1998 Donation Tracking Sheet of Sponsors \u2014 the homes\u2019 main source of income. Photo by Sophie McDougall, Courtesy of the Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to abortion under the 14th Amendment\u2019s right to privacy in\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>. While abortions continued to be a contentious subject in Arkansas, birth control expanded, and the number of\u00a0legally reported abortions<\/a>\u00a0slowly began to rise. With this came a move towards the acceptance of single mothers. The Florence Crittenton Home in Arkansas failed to keep up with the evolution of these public opinions, and in return, plummeted financially. The community stopped donating.<\/p>\n

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By late 1998, the organization\u2019s survival was threatened by unpaid resident care and a need to pivot away from its traditional mission. Photo by Sophie McDougall, Courtesy of the Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 1982 and 1983 records show a desperate attempt to pivot from a \u201cHome\u201d to a \u201cServices\u201d model to please community members and maintain donations. There was a major budget crisis and the board was desperate to fix it. This forced the Florence Crittenton Home to abandon its residential mission for good. The organization officially transitioned into Florence Crittenton Services of Arkansas. They moved away from the secrecy and shelter model of the early 20th century and toward outpatient counseling, family preservation, and support for single parents.<\/p>\n

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Florence Crittenton Home flyer after transitioning to \u201cHome Services.\u201d Photo by Sophie McDougall, Courtesy of the Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Still, the home continued taking in unwed mothers. Valery Burns was one of them. She spoke more highly of her experience there as things began to shift.<\/p>\n

Burns spent a few months in the Little Rock Florence Crittenton Home in 1991. She was 18 and a ward of the state when she arrived. Her pregnancy was far from intentional \u2014 she was sexually assaulted. She had no one around her to give a helping hand when her pregnancy test showed positive. Other than the street, her only option was the Florence Crittenton Home \u2014 and for that, she was grateful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of uncertainty surrounding me, and a lot of fear,\u201d she remembered. She remembered her stay there as a period of intense depression, but credited it to her own situation and fragile state. \u201cAll I wanted to do was do my time and get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

She painted the picture of the home vividly: The red brick exterior. The entrance that led into a formal living room filled with antiques, wing back chairs and two office cubicles. A kitchen and a dining room down the hall. Upstairs \u2014 the living spaces, two girls to a room. A little chest of drawers, no closet. Lockers in the hallway for valuables, community bathrooms and showers She compared the rooms to college dorms.<\/p>\n

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An Undated Flyer from the Little Rock, Arkansas Florence Crittenton Home. Photo by Sophie McDougall, Courtesy of the Roberts Library of Arkansas History and Art.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During her time there, the youngest resident was 13. The oldest was 23. In the morning, the girls had chores: Dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the floors. During the day, they would walk across the street to a metal building for school. There, Burns continued her junior year curriculum. \u201cI was in 11th grade, the 13 year old, I think was like eighth or ninth grade\u2026we were all in the same room doing our own work.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years after Burn spent time there, things went downhill for good. In the early 2000s, the home struggled to meet modern building codes and the specialized requirements of 21st-century social service grants. The Little Rock Florence Crittenton Home officially closed its doors in 2005.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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By March of 2026, the small black type on Selsor\u2019s birth certificate had transformed from a statistical shock into a physical destination. I was standing on the sidewalk of 3610 West 11th Street in Little Rock, staring at the very place where her mother once lived.<\/p>\n

The Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers sits there like a tomb of 20th-century morality. To a passerby, it looks like a forgotten school or a decommissioned hospital.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNo Trespassing\u201d on the fence of the Florence Crittenton Home, March 7th 2026. Photo by Sophie McDougall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was impossible to see into the windows, the blinds were drawn tight. Barbed wire lined the perimeter. The neighborhood was quiet. Stray cats wandered by. Five minutes away sits St. Vincent Hospital, where the girls were shuttled off to for their births. A giant cross is plastered to the wall.<\/p>\n

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St. Vincent Hospital, where the girls were transported to give birth. Photo by Sophie McDougall.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I first began my research on American maternity homes that fall.<\/em>\u00a0I had learned about the tragedy of \u201cstolen babies\u201d in Spain after reading\u00a0Ana Bel\u00e9n Pintado<\/a>\u2019s story a few years previously. I had also heard rumblings of Ireland\u2019s history with cruel Church-run \u201cbaby-mom homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2015, the Irish government conducted major\u00a0investigations<\/a>\u00a0on mother-baby homes in Ireland after hearing claims of children buried in mass graves across the country. There were 18 homes across Ireland where nearly 35,000 pregnant women were confined between 1922 and 1998. Roughly 9,000 children died in these homes. According to the BBC, the findings forced the country to face their harmful attitudes \u201ctowards sexuality and intimacy.\u201d The homes reinforced a system of shame and the need to hide \u201cillegitimate\u201d pregnancies. \u201cYoung mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction,\u201dthe BBC quoted. After these investigations came to light in the media, the catholic church\u2019s authority weakened, and Ireland faced a major shift. The country was forced to face their harmful past.<\/p>\n

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