ABSTRACT
The part Hawthorne House played in shaping the girls' experience of becoming a mother cannot be overemphasized. The issue of greatest moral and psychiatric salience in the House had to do with the relationship of the girls to their babies. Responsibility and denial, both expressed the staff's general etiological view of illegitimate pregnancy and linked this view to their activities in running the home. While concerned that excessive preoccupation with the mechanics of secrecy allowed girls to deny their situation, Hawthorne House staff were also aware that secrecy was their clients' first concern, as well as one of Hawthorne House's central reasons for existence. Respectability was an underlying theme in the House, generally taken for granted and arising for discussion only around relatively mild refinements of good taste. Girls who planned to place their babies for adoption, and most girls at Hawthorne House did, had to draw lines and make decisions with which a normal mother is not faced.
