Joanne Carole Schieble is a heartbreak and survivorship story with painful choices that young women made in mid 20 th century America. Her name itself may not be something that many people recognize, but her life intertwined with the past in some significant manner. The biological mother of Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Inc. was Joanne Carole Schieble, and her choice to adopt a son would also be defining her personal fate and the future of technology and innovation globally.
A Conservative Growing up in Post-War America
Joanne Carole Schieble was born in 1931 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the family of strict Catholic Germans-Americans. Her father Arthur Schieble was a thriving business man who owned a mink farm and was a renowned personality in their community. Having grown up in the Great Depression and graduated in the World War II, Joanne Carole Schieble was brought up in the atmosphere of traditional values and strict expectations. Her family was conservative in terms of religion, education and specifically who their daughter should marry. The Schieble family was an obedience-based one and it could not accept not following the family norms.
Education Hunt and Forbidden Love
Although she had the limitations of a traditional upbringing, Joanne Carole Schieble was bright enough and eager to continue her education and had aspirations to attend a college when most women should think only of marriage and housewifery. She entered the University of Wisconsin, the place where she could open up her horizons and get out of the atmosphere of her small town. It is in her graduate years that Joanne Carole Schieble was introduced to Abdulfattah or John Jandali, the charismatic Syrian Muslim teaching assistant in political science. Their love grew very fast, yet they both realized that they would be heavily opposed to it.
The Pregnancy That Changed It All
Joanne Carole Schieble was in a hopeless position in 1954. She was pregnant with the child of Jandali, was not married, and was sure that her father would never approve of the relationship and the child. The social stigma that was placed on unwed mothers during this period was disastrous. Women who got pregnant are out of marriage were ostracized, shamed, and in many cases, fully rejected by their families and community. Joanne Carole Schieble was torn between her love to Jandali, her devotion to her family and a new life that was developing in her. Her father, Arthur Schieble, said that he would disown her entirely in case she marries Jandali. The stress was tremendous, and Joanne Carole Schieble was put in a situation when she had to make certain decisions, which any young woman cannot make all by herself.
The Journey to San Francisco
Joanne Carole Schieble could not confront the verdict of her society and family, and she had to make the painful choice of leaving Wisconsin. She went to San Francisco where she would deliver her baby without people who were familiar with her to the scrutiny of everyone. This was a trip not only of physical displacement of home but also an emotional exile of everything that was known. Joanne Carole Schieble spent her time in a home where unwed mothers lived in San Francisco where she lived among other women in similar situations. Although these facilities were a source of shelter they tended to strengthen the shame that was directed to unmarried pregnant women by the society.
The Heartbreaking Decision
Joanne Carole Schieble conceived and gave birth to a healthy little boy on February 24, 1955. Mothers happiness was overpowered by the reality she had to live with. She had already had the baby adopted because she felt that it was the only way of providing her son with a stable future and at the same time maintain a good relationship with her own family. The only thing that Joanne Carrole Schieble needed of the adoptive parents was that they have to be college educated since she placed a lot of importance on education and she desired to provide her son with the opportunity of an intellectual life. In the initial case of adoption, the first couple failed after they determined that they would rather have a girl. Paul and Clara Jobs, a working-class couple of Mountain View, California were the next ones on the list of adoptions, in a twist of fate.
Life After Adoption
Joanne Carole Schieble leads her life in different directions after parting ways with her son who would be named Steven Paul Jobs by Paul and Clara Jobs. After the adoption, she was given freedom to get married in 1955 after the death of her father. The couple got married and had another child, though a daughter, Mona Simpson, who would become a renowned novelist in her future. Their marriage to Jandali did not however last very long, and Joanne Carole Schieble divorced and left Mona at a tender age. Joanne Carole Schieble then raised her daughter mainly on her own and did a number of jobs to provide them with money, but she obviously gave Mona a good education.
The Weight of an Impossible Choice
Joanne Carole Schieble had to live with the burden of the decision she had made in 1955 throughout the rest of her life. Social pressures, expectations and lack of choices that unmarried mothers had in that time period had driven her. Although she has continued to live her life and had managed to raise her daughter well, the fact that she did not have her firstborn son was still present in her life albeit silently. The story of Joanne Carole Schieble is a representation of the lives of millions of women in the middle of the 20th century America who were deprived of their children, as they were isolated and stigmatized by society. Such women also tended to live with deep sorrows and unresolved questions concerning the children which they gave away.
A Story of Its Time
The sufferings of Joanne Carole Schieble form a darker side of the American social history, as women were not given a wide range of opportunities and, the outcomes of going beyond social conventions were cruel and unforgiving. Her tale is not new but especially sad since the son she sacrificed would become someone who would transform the world in a way that she never intended at the time she was holding the baby in her arms after he was born. The story of Joanne Carole Schieble teaches us the value of compassion, the harm of dogmatic social judgement and situations that can force individuals to make hard decisions that touch the heart. Although Steve Jobs would later on in life reunite with both his biological parents, over time, the time of being separated, the situation of his adoption, left permanent scars on everyone.
