ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses a defense and fuller statement of that preference, offering a way of understanding illegitimate pregnancy as the incidental product of the way sexual activity is normally organized among unmarried girls in this society. It draws on the girls' recollections of their experiences before arriving at either place, to describe their concerns upon finding themselves pregnant and to comment more generally on the process of arriving at solution to the problem of illegitimate pregnancy. The book also describes the psychiatric and moral orientations of the Hawthorne House staff toward their clients, orientations which are organized around a version of the past and around becoming a mother. It describes what girls make of the House orientations, the moral career of the girl who becomes an unwed mother at Hawthorne House.
