In postwar Canada, having a child out-of-wedlock invariably meant being subject to the adoption mandate. Andrews describes the mandate as a process of interrelated institutional power systems that, together with sociocultural norms, ideals of gender heteronormativity, and emerging sociological and psychoanalytic theories, created historically unique conditions in the post WWII decades wherein the white unmarried mother was systematically separated from her baby by means of adoption. This volume uncovers and substantiates evidence of the mandate in Canada, ultimately finding that at least 350,000 unmarried mothers in Canada were impacted by illegal and unethical adoption practices, human rights abuses, and violence against the maternal body.

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