-- from the "Rules and Regulations of the Florence Crittenton Industrial Home," January 25, 1936.
At mid-morning, the Florence Crittenton Services building, just down the street from Carolinas Medical Center, is quiet. The receptionist is at the front desk, discreetly buzzing the lock on the front door, admitting a delivery person. The women "clients" -- with few exceptions pregnant, and without exception, facing some of life's toughest challenges -- are out of sight. Some are in school classes, others are at doctors' appointments, others are in programs to build their literacy.It's all quite a change from the days in 1903 when the Charlotte chapter of Florence Crittenton Services was established after a 16-year-old unwed, pregnant girl committed suicide by swallowing crushed glass rather than bring the shame of her condition upon herself and her family.
Now in its 100th year, Florence Crittenton Services has helped approximately 35,000 pregnant girls and women who've needed a safe, welcoming place during their pregnancies. The home, along with society, has changed dramatically over the years. No longer is it an "industrial home," accepting only women who have never been married and are expecting their first child. No longer does it insist that women, after delivery, must take their babies with them.
These days, it has expanded its services to include adoption support programs, parenting programs and programs that develop life skills and social skills in order to break the cycle of adolescent pregnancy, child abuse, substance abuse and neglect.
"I needed somewhere peaceful to go," says former Florence Crittenton Services client 19-year-old La'Nae Grimes, who delivered her daughter Kennedy in November. She was having "problems" at home and, although she doesn't give details, she describes a household with two younger brothers, two younger sisters and "nieces and nephews all around." Her godmother, a preacher, recommended Florence Crittenton Services. When Grimes toured the quiet building, with its sunny patio, comfortable parlor and dorm-like rooms, she says she knew she needed to be here: "I wanted to sign up right away."
Other women turn to the agency because they have nowhere else to go. Some have been victims of physical and emotional abuse, or incest. Some come from families where substance abuse is common. Some arrive from foster care programs that aren't able to provide pregnancy services.
"Sometimes the youngsters have not really been close to their family anymore," says Marilyn Thompson, the agency's CEO, who has been involved with Florence Crittenton, originally as a social worker, for 23 years. ". . .these are some very real issues in our society that we have to deal with."
Even though general attitudes toward unwed mothers are much more tolerant today, an unraveling social support system has actually made things more difficult for many of these women. Thompson suggests that the "splintering" of modern-day America -- whereby younger generations leave the support of their established family communities -- contributes to the women's difficulties. "The support system is just not as strong as it used to be, to help families or young people with some of these issues," she says.
"The (clients') needs may be different than they were (years ago), but they're certainly no less intense," agrees Lou Watson, Florence Crittenton Services' Outreach Coordinator. Whether as an employee or a volunteer, she's been with the agency for 30 years. "In some ways, they may be more intense. Florence Crittenton has simply responded to the needs the clients show when they come through the door."
History of Care
In the 1880s, New York City pharmaceutical salesman (and millionaire) Charles Crittenton lost his four-year-old daughter, Florence, to scarlet fever. Afterward, he made it his mission in life to help "fallen" and "dissipated" girls and young women, opening the Florence Night Mission to aid prostitutes who promised to go forth and sin no more. Crittenton later traveled in his private railroad car, "Good News," to communities throughout the country with the hope of establishing a network of homes. Today, there are 31 Florence Crittenton agencies across the country, comprising a division of the Child Welfare League of America. While all have the same essential mission of assistance for pregnant women in trouble, each has local leadership and its own rules. Some chapters, for instance, assist only girls aged 12-18. Others offer international adoption assistance. Some offer programs for the babies' fathers as well as the mothers.
In Charlotte, church and community leaders gathered together in 1903 to organize a Florence Crittenton program, which for three years housed single girls as young as 16 in private homes. The first group facility opened in 1906 at 523 N. McDowell Street. The girls were not allowed to bring "snuff, liquors, or drugs of any kind" into the home, according to the Rules and Regulations, and "any girl coming to the Home must bring a certificate from her home physician stating that she is free from any contagious or infectious disease. No feeble-minded nor venereal cases are admitted."
A mother was not permitted to "discard" her child, but was expected to "retain supervision of it and to preserve it for the instinct of motherly love." At first, adoption services were not widespread, so most mothers took their children home. Many of the children ended up in orphanages. By 1910, however, adoption became prevalent, and nearly 100 percent of the women gave their babies up for adoption, most of them through the Children's Home Society.
In the 1920s, says longtime child advocacy volunteer Judy Harrison Barry, the Florence Crittenton Home began a partnership with an agency that similarly served African-American girls. The relationship was a natural evolution, Barry says, because of Florence Crittenton Home's close ties to the local churches, including African-American churches.
By the 1950s, African-American leaders were serving on Florence Crittenton's Board of Directors. A decade later, the Home was fully integrated. According to Barry, there was no one incident that led to integration: "It was never really an issue" -- no one had ever applied before. Once the Home began an outreach campaign to let African-American women know they were welcome, a church referred one woman, and then another. They were simply admitted.
Judy Aulette, a professor of sociology and women's studies at UNC-Charlotte, says that ideas and attitudes about sex outside of marriage "became more liberal in the last half of the 20th century." Little research on the subject exists prior to the Kinsey studies of the late 1940s, says Aulette, but evidence shows that in the early 20th century, when the Crittenton homes were founded, "women were much less likely to be sexually active outside of marriage, and men were "somewhat' less likely," which led to the severe condemnations endured by unwed mothers of that era.
By the time Lisa Field attended what was then called the "Florence Crittenton Unwed Mothers Home" in 1973 at the age of 15, the "overwhelming majority" of mothers at the Home were putting their babies up for adoption. The waiting list to get into the Home, while still significant, had shrunk as abortion became legal. Fewer women were carrying their babies to term and, as a result, weren't seeking the assistance of Florence Crittenton.
Field was living with her parents in Sumter, SC, and heard about Florence Crittenton through a friend in Charlotte. He had seen a group of five pregnant girls walk by, and asked where they were staying. Her parents brought her to check out the Home and, after telling neighbors that Field was going to summer camp, took her to stay there until her baby was born.
Field remembers sharing a room with two other girls and performing chores such as setting tables for breakfast. They did not, contrary to rumors, wear uniforms. Field was taught things like leadership and pre-natal nutrition and at one point was elected President of the Month, chosen to represent the women's concerns to the agency's administrators.
"It was very structured -- not a resort," Field recalls. The women at the Home, who ranged in age from 13 to mid-30s, all were anonymous, known only by their first names and the first initial of their last names. Mail was handed out with names and addresses crossed out to protect anonymity. Many of the women were embarrassed, if not humiliated, by their pregnancies.
The feelings of shame, however, "changed once we got there," Field says. The women met with counselors who supported the women as they made their own decisions about whether to keep their babies.
"I was never embarrassed about (the pregnancy)," Field recalls. "I just realized I didn't have the maturity to be a mother at the age of 15." Her father, however, would not return her calls while she was at Florence Crittenton, and has not spoken about it since.
Changes in Attitudes
Today, studies reveal that women and men are equally likely to have sex outside of marriage. More than 50 percent of couples, Aulette says, live together prior to marriage. "They see marriage as an alternative, but not the only alternative to having a private life together." Twenty-eight percent of white women give birth outside of marriage, and 63 percent of black women give birth outside of marriage. One factor not taken into account, Aulette cautions, is whether these women are getting married -- to the fathers, or to other men -- after their babies are born.
Shannan Brice, of Charlotte, has never married but lives with the father of her two daughters, and has remained friendly with the father of her 12-year-old son. When she first got pregnant, she lived in California, where the social climate is decidedly more liberal. She remembers people congratulating her on her pregnancy, never asking if she was married.
After she moved to Charlotte and got pregnant again (she was not a client at Florence Crittenton), she found people were less approving. "They didn't give me grief for it, but they didn't say, "Woo-hoo, good for you.'"
Most people, Brice says, probably assume she is married, since "everyone else in the world is married." (Even her mother pretends she's married; "it makes [the situation] easier for her to deal with.") Meanwhile, she continues, "there are so many combinations of people out there these days as couples -- people of different races, different sexes -- that a single mother is pretty low on the totem pole of weirdness."
Field recalls that, even in the 1970s, Charlotte society embraced the "Florence Crittenton girls," inviting them into their homes for social activities and holding swim parties for them. "No one looked down on us, or judged us. I felt like I was treated like a queen."
Yes, even in this world-class buckle of the Bible Belt, it seems our neighbors can often exhibit a charitable attitude toward unwed mothers. Jane Summey Mullenix, associate pastor at Myers Park Presbyterian Church, says that assisting women through organizations such as Florence Crittenton Services "is what Christ commands. We are called to be out in the world caring for all people."
Some Myers Park Presbyterian volunteers have held Board positions at Florence Crittenton, and the church provides a "tiny bit" of financial support. Mullenix says she urges parishioners to shy away from moral judgments of these women.
"Sure, some people would possibly judge these women in a way that's critical," she says, "but when you look beneath (the women's) external set of circumstances to the internal, you see they're just craving love, just like all of us. That's how God made us."
Asked if she believes that having a baby out of wedlock has become more acceptable today, Aulette says that although she's not familiar with any research on it, "certainly as a person observing the world, I believe it's less of a stigma today."
Today's Florence Crittenton
Girls and women older than age 10 -- some clients have been in their 40s -- can be served at the current Florence Crittenton facility. Built in 1988, the 35,000-square-foot building is licensed for 47 beds, including four for some mothers' newborn children. (These mothers are in foster care, where homes aren't available to keep the mothers and children together.) Women come from North and South Carolina, and occasionally from other states. While the average stay is three months, women have stayed from two months to two years. Most women choose to keep their babies, rather than giving them up for adoption.
If a woman can pay for her care, either through savings or insurance -- costs run roughly $115/day per client -- she is asked to do so. Women who can't afford the care are partially covered by the North Carolina Maternity Home Fund. Additional assistance is provided by foundations, corporations, individuals and churches.
The agency has served "almost every type of medical situation," says Thompson: women who are visually impaired, who have conditions such as Cerebral Palsy, who are wheelchair-bound, or have mental health problems. For each, Florence Crittenton Services helps connect them to local agencies that can coordinate individual care plans.
Other services include individual, family and group counseling; substance abuse day treatment; substance abuse prevention education; parenting skills classes; early childhood development education; independent living skills, self-sufficiency and self-esteem building classes; and counseling and home visitation after the mother and baby return home. The goal is to teach women how to help themselves -- not only for their own health, but also for the well-being of their babies.
"We're having an impact on two lives," Thompson emphasizes. "We're serving two generations here. We often talk about getting kids off to a good start in school, but you also need to get them as healthy as possible -- that's one of the best things you can do for a child today."
Watson says she thinks some Charlotteans harbor an image of Florence Crittenton that she used to share before she came to the agency, that the Home was a ""hideaway' kind of place, maybe a little bit scary." (I have a friend whose mother used to threaten her during her teenage years; if she misbehaved, her mother would warn: "I'm going to take you to Florence Crittenton!") Just walk in the door, says Watson, and you'll see it's not a scary place at all. She gives a tour of the home, complete with rooms for games, exercise, arts and crafts, and computers.
The women are required to bring certain items from home, like bedsheets, towels, laundry detergent, and clothes hangers. Cell phones or pagers, however, aren't allowed.
Watson says she hears from people who are surprised that Florence Crittenton Services still exists. "They think, "all the girls (these days) are keeping their babies. It's nobody's secret that they're pregnant -- why in the world is there a need for this program?'"
Just ask La'Nae Grimes, who at Florence Crittenton first learned how to open and maintain a bank account, and who showed such determination that she was awarded a Florence Crittenton scholarship to attend the Carolinas College of Health Sciences. A month ago, she finished her coursework to be a nurse's aide. Her grandmother watches her daughter while she's at school.
"I loved it (at Florence Crittenton)," says Grimes. "The counselors were just wonderful. I miss it so much, I go back everyday."
Adds Lisa Field, now a successful sales and sponsorship consultant for the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association and a member of Florence Crittenton Services' Board of Advisors: "They helped me grow up very quickly. . .What they gave me as a 15-year-old has lasted me the rest of my life."
Upcoming Fundraising GalaFlorence Crittenton Services recently embarked on a $2 million capital campaign designed to further strengthen its service delivery and allow for building maintenance. This Friday (March 21) is the Florence Crittenton Services Centennial Gala. A $100 ticket gains admission to a pre-dinner reception and silent auction, a seated dinner, and the awards presentation. For tickets, or to volunteer at the Home, call 704-372-4663.
