Safe Havens, Inc.

A Little Bit Of Herstory

Safe Havens, it runs out, has conceptual roots in19th century maternity homes. These shelters sprang up in many cities in America especially after the Civil War. They were run by religiously minded social and moral reformers like the Women's Christian Temperance Union" and funded by wealthy philanthropists. Now before you conjure up images of stern, black besmocked, sexually repressive old Victorians in harsh custodianship over young single mothers, please read on. I promise a breath of fresh air from the past. Maternity homes were in fact kindly run albeit with a steady diet of moral and practical admonition. The vaunted Victorian judgementalism was tempered by the motto, "there but for the grace of God go I." These reformers regarded these young mothers as having been victimized by a double standard. Their young wards were poor immigrant women and farm girls who went to the city to work, were poorly paid and became prey for pimps or silver-tongued men, who disappeared after conception. Reformers feared that the end for these young mothers was likely to be prostitution. Besides shelter, sustenance and support, the mission of these homes was to redeem the mother's character and restore her a semblance of her prefallen condition. Many homes encouraged the mother to give up her child to adoption in a good home and thus erase her past and start anew.

Other homes encouraged, as Safe Havens does, young mothers to raise their child while learning work skills. In the work of redemption, a young mother would exude such moral strength that she could take her place in society again, head held high. Another purpose of these shelters was to provide an alternative to the hasty ill-fated marriages arranged by families or forced through exigency. These homes stood against the world at times in their efforts to protect women from being revictimized.

Although many of Safe Havens' founders are religious people, Safe Havens does not require "redemptive" work of any kind and no religious agenda is ever set. We do require that young women work on life skills in order to prepare them for self-sufficiency. In fact, we hope the Safe Havens experience will help teach mothers to raise their standards regarding selection of future husbands! Perhaps that is redemption. Like the older maternity homes women can stay for extended times (rare in this age of managed care) up to four years.

Safe Havens is not modeled on these 19th century homes and the similarities are coincidental. The program just happened to have the dubious fortune of harboring an historian of adolescent pregnancy on its board of directors! The most salient commonality in the historical and modern program is the rootedness in the community amid the reflection of community values and care. This is perhaps the richest soil for healing social wounds and hurts.