I’m rewatching call the midwife from the beginning and I have some questions

[Soubriquet]

When was it more acceptable for young women to give birth out of wedlock, or as single mothers?

When was it “acceptable” for teens to give birth without bringing shame to the family?

When was it accepted that those same teenage mothers got to choose if they wanted to keep their baby, rather than the parents making the decision for you?

I’m rewatching it all from the beginning and I was pondering some things

When was it more acceptable for young women to give birth out of wedlock, or as single mothers?

When was it “acceptable” for teens to give birth without bringing shame to the family?

When was it accepted that those same teenage mothers got to choose if they wanted to keep their baby, rather than the parents making the decision for you?

Well - I am getting on a bit and was a hospital social worker at a maternity hospital during the early 70s, when there still was a stigma to being a single mother. This was particularly so in some cultures. I can remember organising a "hiding place" for a teenage mother who feared for her life if her father found out.

There were two strands: single mothers who really did not care one jot about what people thought, and some had several children one after the other (often through ignorance of how the baby got there, and certainly of contraception); and other girls for whom it was a social and family disaster. So I think we were "on the cusp" of the change in social attitudes at that time.

There were still mother and baby homes where girls wanting their child adopted would go for the birth and the following 6 weeks when the baby was handed over. A terrible emotional journey for them. My biggest challenge was trying to ensure that the mothers did what they wanted rather than what they were being pressured into - it worries me still that there were times I did not get it right. But there were few services to enable young mothers to be supported in caring for a child themselves.

My youngest client was 11. And I helped a girl of 14 who became pregnant behind the blackboard during a school lunch hour. And babies died in secret deliveries (one down the toilet), often with girls (children really) who simply did not know they were pregnant. One of them bundled the baby in a bag and hid it.

God forbid we should ever go back to those days. It was a minefield and a tragedy for so many young women.

Incidentally, it was during my time at the hospital that the Termination of Pregnancy Act came in and I was involved in assessing pregnant women for this under the "Social Clause" - I was also involved in a government study of the effectiveness of the act.

This is fascinating- I assume you found it was a worthwhile law and working well?

One of my parents was born in the early fifties to a teenage, single mother and it fucked her life right up. Obviously, it's good for me that there was no abortion then inasmuch as I'm alive, but abortion would have worked out much better for her.

Did I find it was a worthwhile law and working well? - no, I do not think I could say that at that time. Too much room for personal views to creep into decisions under the "social clause" And many consultants who simply refused to engage with it.

And it was very hard making the assessments: so often I knew people were simply lying to try and get what they wanted. I had sympathy with their circumstances, but should I reproduce the obvious lies in my reports? Often mothers would trip themselves up and their duplicity was not hard to find.

But a lot better than what went before - I had seen women rendered infertile and worse by bodged abortions.

Some cases I believe, with more sympathetic parents, the baby was taken in and the grandparents raised it as their own. This happened with a girl in my year (mid 70s) where the parents adopted the grandchild as their own .
Often stories pop up about someone discovering that their much older sister is actually their mother, certainly those of an age when it was unacceptable for girl to have babies out of wedlock.
In other scenarios the young parents to be were forced to marry and probably endured a life of misery for the sake of "decency"

I had an older cousin who became pregnant in the early 1970s at - iirc - 15. I was too young to know anything about it at the time, having been born in 1967 myself, but when I was much older it came to my attention and I discovered the baby was adopted immediately after birth. When my cousin was 40ish, her daughter traced her and they began building a relationship.

This might be outing, but in 1984 I also became pregnant in my teens (although I was just turned 17 and doing my A levels). My mother didn't want my father to know (because of the 'shame'), although obviously it couldn't be kept from him for too long.

Without any questions regarding whether I wanted to keep the baby I was dragged off to our family GP (who'd been my mother's doctor for years as well as mine since birth) and he was instructed to arrange an abortion and put me on the pill - although by then the boy in question had dumped me and I was totally put off sex for a while, refusing to have sex with my next few boyfriends till I was about 19. The termination was actually carried out in a private clinic in Brighton when I was roughly 14 weeks pregnant.

At the time I didn't regret not keeping the baby, but when I married and had DS I often thought about what might have been had I been given the choice to keep it.

The latter happened with DH's older brother. He was 17 or possibly 18 when he got his 15 year old girlfriend pregnant in the late 1970s. DH's parents insisted he 'did the right thing' by marrying her as soon as she was old enough. They went on to have four DC and - out of the six siblings in DH's family (including DH) - are the only ones to have not divorced.

I was 17 when I gave birth to my eldest in 1975. There was still a stigma about unmarried mothers even then. My parents, luckily for me, were great, not happy about it, but helped. It was other people that looked down on me and actually told my mum that they felt sorry for her having a daughter having a baby out of "wedlock"!

My gran was born in 1920. Her mother was single and never revealed who the father was. She was able to bring her up without any issue as far as I understand. I expect that was not the norm though.

Thanks everyone for sharing your stories, this is so interesting & sad to read.

I would say only in the eighties did it become more normal and acceptable to be an unmarried mother. I remember when Miss World (Helen something, was it Ward?) was exposed as being an unmarried mother, in the 1970s, and she had to give up her title. There was quite a bit of sympathy for her but also disapproval.
With teenagers, I assume you mean younger teens not 18 and over ? Teenagers were sometimes pressured to marry if 16 or over, and sometimes pressured into giving up their baby. I think this changed as the 1970s progressed. I am late fifties, for reference, and grew up in Wales so it may have been different in large cities like London.

Although - My grandmother (I recently discovered) was an unmarried mother in her early twenties, in the 1920s. She kept the baby - I think she must had had support from her sisters - and married someone else when the baby was a toddler, going on to have more children . So some women did manage to weather the disapproval . I imagine having family support was key here.

I was born in 1984 and there was definitely still some stigma about teenage/unmarried mothers. I had my son aged 17 in 2002 (21 today, happy birthday kid!) and there was no stigma whatsoever about being unmarried. I believe attitudes changed in the 80s heading towards the 90s.

I wonder if attitudes lightened or were a little different in wartime? My great aunt became pregnant during WWII, the father was an American GI who fucked off and was never seen again. My great aunt kept her son and raised him with the support of her family; when her son was about three she met her husband who took him on as his own. There was never any sense that my great aunt was the one with any shame to carry, that was all directed at the father. I’ve heard the same story replicated among several of my friends, of older female relatives who kept babies conceived from flings or affairs during the war.

DH’s mum was 14 when she had him in 1969. The circumstances of her pregnancy have never been discussed, he’s no idea who his father is, whether they were in a relationship, whether he knew, whether she was raped. Even now she changes the subject. It’s horrible

Social stigma is a funny thing isn't it. Even now is our society as OK as we like to think with single mothers? I think society accepts unwed couples but women on their own? I would say that they are still often seen as irresponsible but for what? For being the parent who stayed? I feel that society is happy enough for women to have sex yet should the natural consequence occur (and no contraception is 100%) then it is often somehow considered to be her fault.

17 years ago I became pregnant. Mid 20s, long term relationship but not living together. Eyebrows were raised, relatives said I would have to "get rid of it" and people called me a single mother as though it were a derogatory term. At baby groups I was the one to be pitied, looked after and helped which was baffling and patronising rather than nice!

It has been a long and gradual change I think but there is still a way to go.

My mum was married but divorced in 1972 when I was 2 - right up to the mid 80’s people looked down on her (although more so in the 70’s) including people from our church who refused to speak to her. I was bullied and told my mum was a slut and a slattern !
so yeah I imagine for unmarried single parents it’s was equally- probably more, shit

Thank you for all the stories. It’s fascinating and sad to read.

When I say teenagers, I mean the ones who are sent away to mother and baby homes to birth in secret, and then come home as if nothing had happened.

Im so pleased that we have changed so much as a society.

These stories are very interesting, if often sad. I would also locate the shift in attitudes to more acceptance of unmarried/young mothers in the late 1970s and in the 1980s. My own mother became pregnant with me unexpectedly in 1968, aged 17. My father was 18 and they’d only been seeing each other for a few months. Contraception and abortion was by that time available, but there was still a lot of stigma about it that my mother had internalised. When the pregnancy was confirmed my father ‘stepped up’ and married her; she went bulging down the aisle in January 1969 and I was born three months later. Happily, my parents grew to really love one another and are still happily married today in their 70s, however I think this experience of unexpected teen pregnancy had profoundly marked them, as I was an only child and they never expressed desire to give me siblings.

Interestingly, I was discussing this with my mum not long ago, and we decided the shift must have happened gradually over the 80s.

I was born in the early 70s, and Mum said there was a lot of stigma still around then. While she was in hospital having me, a young teenager was brought after a botched back street abortion. Mum said that after witnessing that, she thought abortion should be legalised.

By the time I was in sixth form in the early 90s, I knew two girls at my school who became pregnant. One kept the baby and the other had a termination. Both were supported in their decisions.

My mum was a teenage mother. She was 18 when she had me. My dad was 20. They got married in august, and I was born in December.

She had had one termination before me. They had been together since she was 15

I remember a letter my mum received from a friend in 1988 saying she was going to bring up her 16 year old daughter’s child as her own. She did. The child went on to have leukaemia when he was primary aged; I have no idea if he is still alive, but I do think about that family regularly.

Single mums
Single mums, maybe the 80's, though clearly there still is sadly some discrimination today, and people still often judge those that decide to have a baby by themselves etc.

Teen mums
I think this has actually got more taboo.

Back in early CTM times, being a married, older teen mum was considered perfectly normal. It was unmarried/single parenthood which was taboo more than age. In 1950, the average age for women to get married was 20, so by late teens, many would have been mothers.

Younger teens is probably as taboo now as then.

Choice vs parental choice
I don't think look there is much more choice now than there was then in reality. I don't think many teenage girls are able to keep their babies if their family's are against it - managing without support is hard enough for she's, let alone teen-agers. The difference is girls are more likely to be pressurised into an abortion now, than adoption. I can't imagine many truly have a lot of say in the matter, unless they have supportive parents (which would have been the same 50 years ago).

Fascinating thread. Does anyone know when single mothers started to get enough from benefits to support themselves and their children, plus some priority for social housing? I have the impression that widows got something in the early years of the Welfare State, but other single mothers may not have done, as the assumption was that the father should be supporting them. Of course that often won't have happened, so as others have said family support must have been crucial in enabling a single girl or woman to keep her baby.