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

[Lambsandchicks]

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

I think it depends on where you lived. London being more advanced than say a small remote village.

The term bastard or whoreson, was legitimised and removed in the 20s. But I’d say widespread in the early eighties it was fine. But it wasn’t one day it wasn’t fine the next it was, it was a slow recognising of this was totally acceptable, which occured over time as we moved through the eighties.

It’s horrific it was that recent though.

Rural northern England. I was born late 60s, my parents were (and still are) together, they didn't marry. It was not acceptable, family made comments - only about my Mum, typically. I always thought the 60s were free love, hippydom and all that. But no. I wasn't even allowed to join Brownies because the leader knew my parents weren't married and I wasn't christened because the vicar refused for the same reason.

Medieval recorded history has plenty of examples of iliigitimate offspring of royalty and aristocracy rising to positions of powers and I'm sure that unrecorded history before then had examples previously too. So thinking it was socially unacceptable seems to be quite a modern concept that bucks the general trend.

And just read one of the pp. Yes, my Mum was treated really badly by the midwives in hospital.

@VampireMoney

I was born in 1975, my parents weren't married. I know loads of people roughly the same age as me and slightly older born to women who weren't married. No one really made a fuss about it back then my mum said. I think she had a couple of raised eyebrows from neighbours but that was it.

My son was born in 1975. I didn’t know anyone who had kids then who wasn’t married. Literally no one. All my friends at the time were pretty hippy dippy too - lots of musicians and artists.

70s baby here. Catholic country. Most certainly frowned upon.

I was born out of wedlock but my parents married a few weeks after I was born. My mum had already been married and divorced before.

This was 1971

Yes I'd say 80s. For me in north Scotland it was very rare for anyone's parents to be divorced/single mum or even "living in sin" in my school class in the early 80s.

By the end of the decade half of us were living with uni boyfriends and nobody cared. Certainly by the early 90s having a child when unmarried wasn't an issue. That's partly why the "back to basics" slur campaign fell rather flat. There just wasn't enough of the stigma as such that the Tories were hoping to use. Scummy shagging bastards the lot of them. John Major and Edwina Currie

@DalarnaHorses

Rural northern England. I was born late 60s, my parents were (and still are) together, they didn't marry. It was not acceptable, family made comments - only about my Mum, typically. I always thought the 60s were free love, hippydom and all that. But no. I wasn't even allowed to join Brownies because the leader knew my parents weren't married and I wasn't christened because the vicar refused for the same reason.

Yes, the priest of our parish refused to baptise me because I was illegitimate.

An uncle persuaded a neighbouring parish priest to do it, and the extended family turned up in their droves, dressed up as if going to meet the Queen, to send a very clear message that I was theirs.

@Gwenhwyfar

"It really wasn't. I shacked up with now DH in 1990 and it was a normal, unremarkable thing. Loads of people we knew cohabited, and I knew many in the 80s who did."

I didn't say that nobody did it, just that it was considered risque and very modern and some/many of the older generation would have disapproved.

I agree. My older sister lived with her partner in the 90s and my parents were disapproving and embarrassed. They did not tell their friends, who would have felt the same.

I assume that my sister and her friends found it entirely unremarkable.

My sister had her DD in 83, our mother threw her out the family home and was in bed and breakfast before council housed her, her bf and the child.. fast forward to mid 90s i lived away from family home, got pregnant, mother said “well you better come home come home then”

@SucculentChalice

Medieval recorded history has plenty of examples of iliigitimate offspring of royalty and aristocracy rising to positions of powers and I'm sure that unrecorded history before then had examples previously too. So thinking it was socially unacceptable seems to be quite a modern concept that bucks the general trend.

Henry VIII had mistresses who were already married so any children would be legally regarded as the offspring of the their husband. e.g Henry Carey son of Mary Boleyn.

My grandmother had six without being married in the 1920s. All well looked after and loved.

I presumed that the OP was referring to couples having children without being married first, but some people are talking about single mothers and teenage pregnancy, which are all quite different circumstances.
We had our children in the 1990s in our late 20s (still together) and it was not an issue, but I wasn't a 16 year old schoolgirl - had I been I'm sure it would have been different, though I don't think being unmarried would be the reason for judgement.

One of the homes where they put unmarried mothers in Ireland did not shut down until 1997!!
It is still a thing to re register your child’s birth if you get married. Seems totally outdated.

I can remember a colleague leaving work to have a baby in the very early 80s. She wasn’t in a relationship and didn’t volunteer any information about the father.
We all felt sorry for her and were supportive.

Another colleague around the same time conceived and concealed the pregnancy with the avowed intention of getting a council house and living off benefits, which she did - we did look down on her. The baby’s father was around during the pregnancy, but she didn’t mention him much.

DH’s mum was pregnant in ‘78 and had a shotgun wedding when she was about 6 months pregnant. Her grandfather (who she lived with) was appalled and it really affected their relationship until the day he died.
My mum was single and unmarried when she had me in ‘81, and she had a couple of friends in the same boat. I don’t think it was an issue.

Someone in my family became a father before he was married, must have been very late 60s or maybe 1970, and I remember his partner saying to me that they'd thought I might be shocked (I was about 15 and I wasn't). So I think by then it wasn't such a big deal, swinging 60s and all that.

But my father was born to a single mother in 1908, in London, working class family, and she brought him up with support from her father; and of course there must have been very many unplanned pregnancies then and I wonder if maybe there wasn't such a stigma about it, particularly in poorer communities? I have no idea but would be interested to know.

On my dads side of the family, his sisters and him had children in the 80s, all after getting married.
On my mums side, her brothers had children born in the late 90s and early 2000s, who were not married.
I think it changed in the 80s.

Most 80s kids had married parents, atleast that I knew of.

At my daughters school ( she’s 6) I’d say it’s a real mixture of both married and unmarried.

Certainly for my grandparents generation, having children out of wedlock just wasn’t the done thing and didn’t really happen.
People got married if they were pregnant.

Have just skimmed this thread, but I only recently learnt that in Ireland, divorce was only granted in 1996

"My son was born in 1975. I didn’t know anyone who had kids then who wasn’t married. Literally no one. All my friends at the time were pretty hippy dippy too - lots of musicians and artists."

I'm two years younger than your son and I've never met anyone my age whose parents were never married to each other.

Growing up, I never knew of a single person who had parents who hadn’t been married when they were born. I didn’t really know anyone whose parents divorced until my teens and even now in my late 40’s I could count the number of people I know who have had kids without being married on less than one hand.

Odd assumption in the OP, it’s still not socially acceptable to have DC out of wedlock.

I think there was a huge change between the 70’s and early 80’s.

I remember my Sil laughing at being an unmarried mother in 81.