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

[Lambsandchicks]

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

You weren’t talking about “children born out of wedlock” @ArseInTheCoOpWindow. Your post was about teenage mothers. I suspect very few mothers of teenagers of either sex would welcome news of a pregnancy.

@Blossomtoes

Really no one cares now

I think you’ll find they do outside the rarified corner of the universe you seem to inhabit.

I think you'll find they don't.

I had my dd in 2006 as a single unmarried women and plenty of people disapproved!!!

@miltonj

Being a single mum was very much demonised by the Labour Party in the 90s. But probably different if women were in a stable relationship but unmarried.

It was demonised by the Tories whose married male MPs were busy creating other families.

I said it up thread.

The Tories were complete hypocrites.

It became a running joke during Major's government.

Once Nu Labour came in people started to stop giving a shit about single mothers, unmarried mothers, martial affairs and gay people.

It was not acceptable for me in 2000 to have a baby when unmarried at 18

My experience was shocking and horrific and abuse

Once Nu Labour came in people started to stop giving a shit about single mothers

They certainly did. To the extent of cutting their benefits.

@ProfYaffle that's not the reason they reissue the birth certificate. It's so if you have more children once married they are all treated the same legally. It's very important as the children born once you're married could contest inheritance etc.

Harriet Harman inherited benefit changes that had already been budgeted for by the Tories. She’s written about how much she hated having to go ahead with the single parents benefit cut.

Gordon Brown then went on to put loads into child tax credits over the years.

@Blossomtoes

Once Nu Labour came in people started to stop giving a shit about single mothers

They certainly did. To the extent of cutting their benefits.

It was actually Thatcher than Major who started cutting single mothers benefits. (My mother was affected.)

Nu Labour came in and said they wouldn't change the Tories economic plans. They also ignored some social ones even though it affected some of their own MPs. They were so scared of the Murdoch press...

@Moancup

Harriet Harman inherited benefit changes that had already been budgeted for by the Tories. She’s written about how much she hated having to go ahead with the single parents benefit cut.

Gordon Brown then went on to put loads into child tax credits over the years.

Of course she has. Nobody made the Labour government do it. Blair had just won a landslide, it would have been the easiest thing in the world not to, yet they did.

I was beyond thrilled when they won but I was equally furious when they did that. It was unforgivable.

@Blossomtoes Nu Labour had an irrational fear of the Murdoch press.

There have been documentaries on the Blair and Brown years plus phone hacking. Brown had to disclose private stuff before they did as he would get a phone call from the News of the World or The Sun editor saying we are going public with X.

Nu Labour had an irrational fear of the Murdoch press

It’s not so irrational when you consider it owed its landslide to the media. But they did that within weeks of winning the 1997 election and it would have been long forgotten by the next one. I found it unforgivable, I can remember shouting at the radio “This isn’t what I waited 18 years for”!

@littleangel50

Anyone who things your comment may not fit in with their modern thinking has to watch the film the magdalena sisters with Pearce brown and showing the plight of Yong women falling pregnant in Ireland and still it doesn't allow contraception watch it and weep and think yourself you weren't born 30 years ago

You think Ireland doesn't allow contraception??

I had a baby in 1994 in my early 20's. I was studying for a professional qualification at university. I was single. I was treated like some fallen woman and spoken to by various tutors about my lack of 'shame'. I was even asked why I wasn't considering adoption! This was a Russell Group university city that believed it was progressive and modern.
The newspapers at the time were full of stories of single woman getting pregnant for a council house and benefits. We got lambasted for our 'disgraceful behaviour' and how society was heading for Armageddon because of us.
Absolutist crackers really on reflection now but it did influence the kind of mother I was as I didn't want to fulfil any of the stereotypes perpetuated at the time.

My half brother was born in 1973. I don't think my Mother ever even ever disclosed who his father was. She was basically treated like worse than a domestic servant after he was born, her mother made her hide away indoors and clean. My Mother met my father a couple of years later, and he married her within 6 weeks so he could get her away from her parents. He couldn't have lived with her without marrying her first because of his own conservative family, though they did accept my brother.

@Yogagrandmum

I think a lot of acceptability was due to age. If you were a teenager it would have been frowned on and it still is now.

that's a good point. i think that is what fires the conservative objections, largely. it's a matter of economics. some people object to the state being made into the child's father, effectively, where the lone parent has to depend on benefits to get by, instead of a resident father who would support mother and child. if older, financially independent women choose to have a baby on their own, then fewer people comment. as it doesn't seem to affect them, in terms of tax funded welfare payments.