When My 15-Year-Old Cousin Had a Baby
In 1961, my cousin had an unplanned pregnancy and delivered a baby. Of course, what 15-year-old plans to get pregnant? She managed to hide and deny her condition until she was well into her second trimester. In retrospect, I wonder if she really understood she was pregnant. Those were different times, and my cousin and I were raised in total ignorance of sex and its consequences.
I remember having one very brief talk with my mother in which she explained how babies were created. I think I was in high school. When I expressed the opinion that what she had described was gross, she countered that when a girl was married, it was natural. Before that, however, sex was to be avoided at all costs. Chances are, my cousin was given a similar talk, or perhaps no talk at all. Chances are she had no idea she might become pregnant by being sexually active with her high school boyfriend.
In those days, girls like my cousin who became pregnant were sent to homes for unwed mothers. Before Roe v. Wade became the law of the land in 1973, abortions happened in back alleys or were done by doctors who called them D&Cs. They were dangerous and expensive. Having an illegal abortion was a given at the time my aunt realized my cousin was pregnant.
The timing couldn’t have been better for my aunt and uncle, as they sent my cousin to a home for unwed mothers in the summer months. They told everyone she was at camp. Instead, she was living with other pregnant girls during her last trimester and delivered the baby alone with just enough time to return to high school in September. I was forbidden to talk about her pregnancy or the adoption of her baby. She came home to a world that pretended nothing had occurred and returned to a school in which everyone knew exactly what had happened. At age 15, she was now a bad girl, whispered about in the hallways.
I wish I had talked to her about her experience back then. I wish I had been able to support her in some way. But I was so afraid of the shame this would bring to the family that I even denied it had happened when a boy I dated in college, who had attended her high school, laughed when I told him she was my cousin. Wasn’t she the girl who’d been knocked up? Somehow, this was hilarious; I insisted it was untrue.
My cousin married and had three children. While her husband knew about her past, she never told her kids or talked about it with me. I know she became religious as a kind of penance. When one of her children was afflicted with epilepsy, she viewed this as punishment for what she’d done. Shame and guilt were never far from her mind. Back then there were no single mothers, only unwed mothers who gave up their babies for adoption without even holding them.
When the child she gave birth to eventually found her, as an adult, my cousin and I finally talked. She wasn’t sure what to do. Should she meet with her first child? She shared the pain and fear of giving birth by herself at such a young age and the humiliation of returning to school where everyone seemed to know what had happened. I told her how sorry I was that I wasn’t there for her when she needed me the most, but I could be there for her now. The more she talked, the clearer it became that she should meet her child. Much of the shame and guilt she had lived with for her entire life could be healed by building this relationship.
This story does not have a happily-ever-after ending. While my cousin did establish a close relationship with her first child and came to regard her children as grandchildren, my cousin’s other children never accepted the new relationship. Yet, a certain amount of healing took place before my cousin’s death from cancer. I finally was able to tell her that I loved her when she was an unwed mother as well as in the present, that what had happened to her was forgivable, and that I understood how painful the experience had been. I hope she died feeling peace and forgiveness.
My cousin was the sister I never had. We grew up together when we were young, but drifted apart after moving to different suburbs and attending different schools. I wish I hadn’t covered for her when she snuck out with her boyfriend, telling my aunt she had been at my house. I wish we had been closer after she had her baby. I wish we felt we could talk about what had happened back then. When I think of her now, I miss her and regret how little I did to help her when she needed me. In my memory, she will always be a good and kind person who carried a great burden and had a hard time forgiving herself. But she’s not the one who needed to ask for forgiveness. Rather, I hope she came to forgive me and the rest of our family.
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