Word: womanizers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...everyone. Some birth mothers would slam the door if their relinquished baby came knocking. In fact, the search process is the focus of a great debate in adoption circles. Critics contend that it breaks legal contracts, that confidentiality should be the cornerstone of adoption. Says a woman who gave up a child 28 years ago: "The mere thought of being found by this baby is so upsetting. I made a new life for myself, and it doesn't include...
...even for those willing to part with their babies, there is adoption's dark history to overcome. Until very recently, every party to the transaction bore the scars of its language: "promiscuous," "barren," "illegitimate." When adoption professionals called a woman the natural mother, it left adoptive parents in a semantic dilemma. Were they unnatural parents? The techno-jargony "birth mother" was the more neutral alternative. All the secrecy reinforced the shame: as recently as the 1970s, some delivery-room nurses covered the mirrors and draped towels in front of a woman giving up her child, or even blindfolded...
...maintained, the notion of cooperative adoption may raise unsettling questions for the children. In an era of divorce, remarriage and yours-mine-and-ours families, it is perhaps less anomalous than it once was to contend with two sets of parents. Still, what does the child call this woman who comes to visit and sends the birthday cards? What is he or she to think when that person later has children she decides to keep? Worst of all, what happens if the birth mother, having endeared herself to her child, suddenly stops coming to visit...
...each story as often as possible) and dramatically clumsy. A re-creation of the near crash of an American Airlines DC-10 in 1972 featured the original pilot and one flight attendant (now 17 years older) playing themselves, not very convincingly. Another story recounted the ordeal of a woman, nearly paralyzed with cystic fibrosis, who spent 16 years neglected in a mental institution. The piece was light on facts and heavy on sensationalism: the asylum scenes looked like outtakes from The Snake...
Although she makes films elsewhere, Hollywood has not cast Redgrave since Yanks in 1979. She has secured only sporadic U.S. TV work. Other actors report that merely suggesting her for a role is enough to damage their own careers. The protest peaked in 1982, when the woman whom Redgrave was playing called for her to be ousted from the Emmy-winning lead in Arthur Miller's CBS-TV drama Playing for Time. Politics also excluded her from being cast in the Broadway drama Plenty. That same year, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, allegedly fearful of disruptions and of losing donor support...