When did it become socially acceptable to have a baby without being married?

[Lambsandchicks]

1990s? Or before that? Any history/sociology experts around?

I was pregnant in 2003 and my GP volunteered the view that nice girls like me didn't have babies out of wedlock. I was 18, nearly 19, so that will have affected his view, but still.

In 2017, some of my family were still quite concerned my DP and I weren't married before DD was born. I still, quite regularly, find people who assume DD isn't my legal daughter because I'm not married to her mother.

I had my first born in 1984 and in the ward I was in the next bed to a girl who had just turned 15 year old and was a single Mum who had somehow managed to conceal her pregnancy until she went into labour. She lived near to my sister. A number of the nurses asked her if she was planning on having child adopted. She was even told it might be better if she bottle fed in case baby got used to breast feeding and she gave him up and it would be harder on baby then. She kept baby and her parents helped her care for him whilst she was at school. About 3 years later she married the father of baby. I think it was her age more than being unmarried that caused all the fuss. Some of the nurses were not very kind to her though. In those days you had to stay in a week when you had a baby and sometimes 10 days with your first born.

In the '80s living with someone was definitely more acceptable. but there was still a feeling that if you were going to have kids then marriage was preferable. I had both mine in the late 80s and only got the odd comment about getting married because I was pregnant.
What was vilified in the 80's was single mothers. we were the scapegoats for all society's ills. If we weren't scrounging benefits, then our kids were feral and destined for a life of crime and we were a drain on taxpayers.

People saying not the 80s or 90s.
Must depend on where you're from and what social circles you move in as was definitely frowned upon for want of a better word when I was a teen in the 90s.

@NeedleNoodle3

I think around 1990. I had my first DC in 1988 and the scan lady asked if I was having my baby adopted.

Flipping cheek of the woman!

I was born in 1968. My parents were both married - but not to each other...
That will have been a big thing back then.
Stupid as it sounds now.
Still know someone now who had a baby out of wedlock in the 60s and was vilified for it, meant a lot for years
Pressured to give baby up as

I grow up in a very middle class commuter (to London) town.
I would say in was in this century that things changed in my home town.

I was living in London as an art student where anything went at that point, attitudes were very different to their parents.

Sometimes it depends on attitude rather than the year. SIL, single, had a child in 2021 and FIL was in tears because of “the shame”

I remember in 2003 a nurse told me I was not to get pregnant as I wasn't married yet.

@Tubbyinthehottub

When we registered the birth of our baby in 2010 and mentioned we had booked our wedding and needed to sort that out, the registrar told us we MUST re-register the birth after marriage. He did say this would make it look like the baby was born within wedlock (!) bit also inferred that there were legal implications...I don't know what and I can't remember if we did it or not.

We were told the same thing (2016). The reason given was that if we had any more children after getting married they would be legitimate and DS would be illegitimate which would have implications for inheritance if we didn't have a will, i.e illegitimate child wouldn't get any. But if you reregister the birth after marriage then that child would be seen as legitimate.

So legally speaking I would say having a child out of wedlock is still not acceptable.

I remember in the 60's there was a cartoon of two women talking, and one says to the other, "MARRIED? I'm not even pregnant yet!" So, somewhere around then.

In school in the early 1970s I can remember the horror when we heard 2 of the girls in our year were pregnant . In our eyes that was the worst thing that could happen to you. They didn't come back to school and I don't know what happened re the babies or them. I was always threatened with being thrown out if I came home pregnant. A cousin of mine had 2 babies to different fathers when she was young and she did have a shit life on benefits and with various men. My Grandfather wasn't even told that she had had a second baby. In the 1970s it was very shameful.This started to get less so in the 1980s.

Had no idea about re registering a birth after marriage!
I think it became more acceptable in the nineties and definitely by the 2000s.
There was definitely still stigma in the eighties to being unmarried and having a child.

I was born in 1963 when my mother was still married to her 1st husband. Their divorce was finalized when I was 3 months old and my parents married, However it was a very quiet registry office wedding an I was conspicuously absent from the few wedding photos taken.

I have 2 cousins who were forced to marry when they were pg at 16, in 1979 and 1984. So sometime shortly after that.

I got married when my son was 6 weeks old and I got him re registered. I was also told this was for inheritance reasons as an illegitimate child wasn't automatically allowed to inherit. I think the law changed around just after that point

Is was very mixed up as things were still changing until early/mid 90s I think.

I started working in the late 80s and there were a couple of unmarried mums and no one cared, but at the same time a colleague moved in with her fiance but moved out again due to family pressure to get married first.

I asked my Dr for the pill in 1988 and got a lecture about sex before marriage, god, then a prescription thrown at me with no health checks. Some friends had equally awkward appointments with their Drs.

I definitely recall in about 2003-04 that after graduating and searching for work, that when I signed on at the job centre, I was assigned a specific Advisor for Single Parents.

All I can say is that her needs were far greater than mine - and I'm not sure what she did really - except somewhat laughably suggesting that I do a Foundation Course (already had a degree) or I should take up Hairdressing.

Been self-employed ever since.

mid 60's to early'70's

You might find this interesting, if someone else hasn’t already shared.

www.closer.ac.uk/data/percentage-live-births-marriage/

Further down there is also a link to data on marriage rates.

My DH was born to an unmarried mother in 1972 and never knew his father or knew much about him. He wasn't named on his birth certificate. DH is fine about it and says never noticed any stigma growing up. However, when we went to meet the registrar to do the paperwork before we got married she wouldn't let it drop when he said that he didn't know his father's name so would be unable to put it on our marriage certificate. He was quite upset about it.

I was born in the late 80s to unmarried parents and it brought great shame to my religious grandparents. Abortion and adoption were discussed but my mum refused. It was very dramatic. My grandad died (much later, not from the shame) but the same grandma was very happy when I got pregnant outside of marriage 25 years later.

@notnowdennis

Magdalene laundries/asylums for single mothers still operated until 1996 in Ireland. Women in the UK were still being detained for ‘mental health issues’ for having a affairs or having children outside marriage in the 1980s.

I don’t think the stigma has gone at all.

You were considered ‘mentally defective’ if you were pregnant and unmarried, and not only in Ireland but also in the UK. I remember a resident in a nursing home I worked in, mid-1980’s, who’d been in a workhouse/asylum from 14 years old because she’d got pregnant by her employer (she was a kitchen maid). When I knew her she was well into her 70’s, and said to be deaf mute because no one ever her her talk. A very isolated lady, incredibly sad story. She’d come into the home when the last ‘long stay hospital’ closed (formerly the workhouse ☹️) As a midwife in the mid 70’s all pregnant women were addressed as Mrs, I don’t remember an discrimination against unmarried women. Certainly as a child (born early 50’s) my mother was very scathing of unmarried women, but then she also told me that if I ever brought shame on the family she would kick me out. Still makes me shudder now.

My husband's parents were unmarried when he was born. He is a toddler in their wedding pictures (late 80s). She was made to wear a fake wedding ring when in the hospital by her parents.

From personal experience, not the late 80s, society wasn't there yet.