I have to recommend this recent episode of “This American Life” about two women who were switched in the hospital when they were born in 1951, and didn’t find out until 1994. I tuned in, figuring it would be interesting to hear about the fallout from such a revelation, but what I wasn’t expecting was how this story would shift over from a “Whoda thunk it?"-type story to a fable about the lunacy of sexism and male domination. Because one of the mothers knew what had happened from the day she got home from the hospital, but didn’t tell. Knowing that all this heartache (and really, it’s distressing how much this upended the switched babies lives as adult women) could have been avoided if she’d just spoken up in 1951, the central mystery of the tale is why Mary Miller, the mother who knew, didn’t speak up.
The truth is uncomfortable, and really I think if it wasn’t so bald and if Mary Miller hadn’t been so insistent on it, the producers maybe would have downplayed it more, because the truth really has the potential to unnerve not only the participants in the program, but pretty much everyone who has female family members, especially older ones, that have to tip-toe their way through life, employing passive aggression and subterfuge, all to avoid the anger of men who don’t like women speaking up about pretty much anything. The two families in this story are very different. The family that had no knowledge, the McDonalds, come across as a mainstream Midwestern 50s family---church-going, but not religious, interested in athletics and school spirit, mildly indulgent to children without spoiling them. The Millers come across much worse---evangelical Christians with a whole passel of children they make sleep in one bed and who they discipline with the strap. It’s unfortunate that the mother who figured it out belonged to the Miller family, because when she said something about it, her husband immediately dismissed her (probably in no small part out of habit), and she didn’t have any recourse because she couldn’t confront him on it. So, she hid it until he mellowed on the subject and admitted she was right, 43 years later.