She grew up without a father, and lost her mother to mental health disorders
Norma Jeane Mortenson was born on June 1, 1926, to Gladys Pearl Baker, a Mexican migrant worker. Young Norma Jeane was the result of a workplace affair between her mother and coworker Charles Gifford. The father did not acknowledge his responsibility nor paternity, and Gladys was at the time married, to her second husband, a man named Martin Mortenson. Fatherhood was not high on Mortenson’s list of priorities either; he vanished from Norma Jeane’s life following a divorce from her mother in 1928. Norma and her mother lived with friends off and on during her childhood, and Gladys moved from job to job. Eventually she was able to purchase a small home for herself and her daughter, in Hollywood in 1933.
The following year, when Norma was 17, her mother suffered what was then euphemistically called a “nervous breakdown”. It was the beginning bout with paranoid schizophrenia which would keep Gladys institutionalized for the rest of her life. The state of California took over responsibility for Norma; the teenager became a ward of the state, residing in different foster homes over the ensuing four years, as well as in an orphanage between homes.
