Maribeth Robertson's teenage pregnancy

Maribeth Robertson's teenage pregnancy is the turning point that forces a sixteen-year-old to confront the limits imposed on her by family, circumstance, and the expectations surrounding an unmarried girl. Initially treated as a shame to conceal and a problem to remove from home, the pregnancy becomes a test of her ability to claim a future: she seeks education and independence while deciding that another family should raise her child. Her eventual choice of Liz Whittaker and John Whittaker as adoptive parents brings grief, kinship, and an uncertain but real opportunity to continue her education into the same decision.

Discovery and the choice before her

Maribeth is sixteen, having turned that age only two weeks before the encounter that led to the pregnancy. Six weeks after she and Paul Browne had sex, Paul and Debbie announce their engagement and plan to marry after graduation. On that same day, Maribeth realizes she is pregnant. She is only two weeks late, but persistent nausea and other changes in her body make the possibility increasingly difficult to dismiss. At the end of May she goes secretly to her mother's doctor. He confirms that she is two months pregnant and asks what she intends to do. Paul's earlier reassurance that pregnancy was unlikely proves wrong; the news leaves Maribeth facing a decision without an easy way out.

She considers adoption because she does not believe she can raise a child while still a teenager and wants to have a life and an education of her own. When she tells her parents she does not want to keep the baby, her father responds with anger and compares her with her brother, who has dated girls without causing a pregnancy. Maribeth argues that she is sixteen, cannot provide a child with what it needs, and should not have to surrender her own future. Her proposal to stay with nuns, continue school, and return after the birth cannot soften her father's response: he has already decided she will leave home.

Expulsion, the convent, and departure

Maribeth's father gives her money and orders her to say nothing to Noelle Robertson beyond that she is going away to school. He intends to drive her to the Sisters of Charity the next morning and tells her that she will return in six months. The separation is more than a change of residence: Maribeth recognizes that she is being sent away from the family home and will have no one there to help her through the pregnancy. She is especially distressed at having to leave her younger sister without telling her the truth.

At the convent, Maribeth encounters two other pregnant girls who are also there to give birth and relinquish their babies. One girl's newborn is taken to waiting adoptive parents without the mother ever seeing her child. The other girl, fifteen and close to giving birth, faces a frightening and difficult delivery; Maribeth later learns that the baby's father is the girl's uncle. Their experiences make the arrangement seem to Maribeth like a process of hiding a shameful secret. The other girls' departures leave her alone with the nuns, and the convent's restrictions and atmosphere feel intolerable to her.

After only a few weeks, she decides to leave rather than remain confined until the birth. She wants work, companionship, and the chance to live as a person in her own right, even while she waits for the baby. At dawn she walks out with her small bag and money, buys an open-ended bus ticket to Chicago through Omaha, and leaves her hometown without regret. Before departing, she sends postcards to her mother and Noelle, promising to provide an address once she has one. Her decision changes the pregnancy from an ordeal managed by her father and the convent into a situation she will try to navigate for herself.

Independence, education, and a new bond

Maribeth reaches a job at Jimmy D's after stopping there on her way to Chicago and seeing a hiring sign. She works while pregnant and remains determined to return to school after Christmas. Her circumstances differ sharply from those of Tommy Whittaker, whom she meets: they are the same age, but he has a home and expects to resume school, while she is living apart from her family and expecting a child within months. She does not initially tell him about the pregnancy or the adoption plan. When she eventually explains that her father sent her to the Sisters of Charity, that she left for Chicago, and that she intends to place the baby for adoption, she describes her reasons plainly: she cannot support a child, wants to return to school and go to college, and hopes to find a family that truly wants the baby.

Her decision is not emotionally simple. As she talks with Tommy, she feels the baby move and acknowledges that she does not know what she should do. She says she does not want a child now and does not love Paul; she is also afraid that she cannot provide for a baby fairly or responsibly. Tommy's willingness to listen gives her room to express both her resolve and her distress. Their friendship becomes a source of support, but it does not erase the practical and personal conflict at the heart of her pregnancy.

Tommy helps make her return to education more than a distant intention. After he goes back to school in September, he brings his books and copies the curriculum so Maribeth can keep up with his assignments while working at Jimmy D's. They study together, and she completes the same work as he does. The arrangement allows her to continue her education during the months she is away from school; Tommy comes to recognize that she is an even stronger student than he is. Her plans to go back to Iowa after Christmas and resume school remain in view even as their closeness grows.

Adoption, grief, and a future beyond the birth

The baby becomes more concrete to Maribeth when her coworkers at Jimmy D's give her a shower before she leaves. Their gifts include knitted clothes, a blanket decorated with ducks, a teddy bear, toys, diapers, and a high chair. Seeing the objects gathered for a child she does not plan to raise makes the consequences of adoption newly real: the baby has the beginnings of a life, but not parents who will raise her. Maribeth calls Dr. Avery MacLean to ask about adoptive families. His possible choices are unsettled: one couple raises concern because the prospective father has a drinking problem, another has just learned that they are expecting a child of their own, and he has not yet spoken with the third. With the birth only two weeks away, Maribeth does not want to take the baby home and then give her up.

She eventually makes a different arrangement from the one first imagined at the convent. Maribeth asks Liz and John to adopt the baby, an offer that transforms her pregnancy's outcome from an impersonal placement into an intimate decision involving people she knows and trusts. After the birth of Kate, the Whittakers assure Maribeth that she may change her mind. She remains firm that adoption is the right decision. Three days after the birth, she signs the adoption papers, waives the waiting period, and asks that the nurse not bring Kate to her that day. The request gives her time to mourn rather than making the separation disappear.

When Maribeth leaves the hospital with Kate and the Whittakers on New Year's Day, she has to make the emotional boundary of the adoption real in the household. Liz carries the baby to the car; later, whenever Kate cries, Liz responds, while Maribeth tries not to go to her. Maribeth knows that she will always love the child, but understands that she is not going to mother her or take the place of her adoptive mother. She imagines that, if their lives remain connected, she and Kate may be friends. The distinction is painful precisely because it is lived at close quarters: Liz is already acting as Kate's mother while Maribeth deliberately holds herself back.

Family connection and the unfinished future

The adoption does not end Maribeth's relationship with the Whittakers. Liz and John offer her the money they had set aside for Annie Whittaker's education so she can attend college. They arrange for her to return home, finish school in the spring, and consider coming back to stay with them or applying elsewhere. They have also agreed that Kate will initially know Maribeth as their friend, not as her biological mother; the possibility of telling Kate the truth is left for the future, if it becomes necessary. The plan protects a boundary around Kate's identity while preserving Maribeth's place in the family's life, though it does not resolve what the child may later be told.

For Maribeth, the prospect of going home is unwelcome: her father has expelled her, and reconciliation is not guaranteed. John believes her father may want her back, though he cannot promise that the conflict has been forgotten. Tommy, who also dislikes her leaving, promises to visit when he can. Maribeth's pregnancy thus concludes not with a return to her former life but with a difficult arrangement: she gives up her child, accepts the grief of that separation, and receives practical support to complete her education. The story holds those outcomes together without treating one as a simple cure for the other. Her future remains open, but it is no longer defined solely by the punishment her father imposed or by the pregnancy itself.