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?

A friend's mum ran away to Scotland because her parents wanted to send her back to Ireland to have the baby and get it adopted to "a decent catholic family". This was 1964.

My friend and his mum never had any contact with them since, even when a tracing agency got in contact to say that one of them had died and the other wanted to see them. They refused to reach out. When the other died, they rejected the will despite it being a house in a very expensive area of north London.

Argh, his mum. Stupid typo.

What about stillbirths?

I know CTM isn’t a factual show, but the amount of times a baby born sleeping is whisked away before the parents can even see them seems to be common.

I do remember reading stories of women who have never gotten over their sleeping babies simply because they weren’t allowed to see them before they were buried. And then they were buried in another’s coffin. Not their own funeral

Michelle being pregnant in East Enders at 16 was quite the storyline which was mid 80s. I was always told I’d be kicked out of the house if I got pregnant before I was married. Just people living together was seen as a bit 😯.

MIL got married in the early 1970s - she was pregnant with SIL at the time and as I understand it there was a lot of pressure for them to get married from family. The had a small register office wedding when she was a few months pregnant, she was always sad she didn't get to have a 'proper' wedding.

When I first started work I remember one woman who was nearing retirement so had started nursing in the late 50s I think. She was very religious and a Catholic but she always said that the one thing she couldn't agree with Church teaching on was abortion, after nursing so many young women who were permanently injured by illegal abortions or even died, it had obviously made a big impression on her and she said she and other nursing staff were so thankful when the law changed and they knew these women would be safe.

I read a really interesting history book about illegitimacy.

In the UK we've kinda gone back and forth on this and it made a huge difference what social class you came from.

Working class, rural communities pre Industrial Revolution didn't really bother much with formal legal marriage. They had nothing so lost nothing. Local churches would try to encourage couples to marry but most of the community didn't care. Baptism records show that a lot of couples were already expecting when the marriage took place.

Higher social classes needed legal marriage to protect assets and inheritances. They were more likely to marry and look down on those who had children outside of wedlock.

The various marriage acts and Victorian morals encouraged more people to marry. Several of the clandestine marriage loop holes were closed as well.

That meant there became more social stigma of being an unwed mother.

This pretty much peaked in the early 20th century.

Relaxation of divorce laws, the sexual revolution and better access to contraception all added to societal attitudes changing.

I was born in the early 80s and I only knew 2 children whos parents were not married at the time of their births. It's was slowly starting to change then.

I’d say it was mid to late 80s.
60s it was definitely give the baby up for adoption. Or child was reared as the grandmother’s “ surprise” baby.
70s I can remember a couple of single mums being spoken to rudely ( one by a nurse in hospital, it was horrible)

The early series (1 and 2 I think) are based on the books by Jennifer Worth and are stories from her time working in the East End.
Later series are totally fictitious.

Stillbirth was more common then. The NHS was in its infancy and many didn't trust hospital institutions. Especially in deprived areas such as that where the workhouse was a more recent memory.

They didn't have the prenatal tests we do so pregnancies progressed that might not progress now. Babies were born sleeping that with modern medicine might be able to survive.

Yep, that was pretty much my Mum's experience when she lost a baby in 1970 (before I was born).

She never saw the baby and definitely no funeral - he was "disposed of" by the hospital. When the midwife visited her at home, she didn't know the baby had died, and asked my Mum where he was. Mum did receive a formal apology for this though - even back in 1970 that was deemed unacceptable.

The attitudes and social behaviour in ‘Call the Midwife ‘ on Tv bear very little resemblance to those in the books it is based on. As the series wore on, they became even more pronounced, the most extra being that a nun who renounced her vows to marry a man would be welcomed back to the convent to work there .

OP, if we're getting on to the subject of stillbirth though, it might be an idea to ask for a trigger warning to be put on the thread title.

We had a friend in the mid 90s whose dad kicked her out of home when she had a baby . Her mum had to meet her secretly . This was a an Irish Catholic family in London, we all thought he was old fashioned but it wasn't unheard of.

In the 70s women's wards had mothers who had miscarried, infertile mothers under treatment and those having abortions all cheek by jowl on the same ward. It caused a lot of distress.

There were benefits for single mothers in the 70s - they could get Supplementary Benefit (as it was called) and rent reductions. But only a few did this. Where the baby was kept, it was mostly within the family in spite of the shame. But lots were adopted.

I remember supporting a 16 year old in a grotty flat who made a great job of bringing up her child, budgeting and mothering in a wonderful way.

I became pregnant at 18 (late 60’s), and was actively encouraged to wed my unborn child’s father. Only then were my parents reasonably accepting of the situation.
At the time, contraception (other than the purchase of ‘durex’) was not available to unmarried women. Also, I feel that there were many old wives tales about the prevention of pregnancy. I was definitely proof that none of these worked.

I've name changed for this because it's very outing, and I don't want it linked with my regular account.

My grandmother had a baby in the 1940's, that was born very ill. I don't one the details, but I know they were sent home from the hospital with the advice to put the baby in a cupboard, and shut the door, and ignore it, because they couldn't survive. I'm assuming that they didn't put poor babe in the cupboard (shudder) but babe did die within a very short period of time (days).

I struggle with the list of compassion down for that poor baby. I choose to believe that my grandparents (now deceased) gave it love and care, because they were incredibly loving people to me, but for the Dr's to suggest that a baby be abandoned to die in a cupboard alone, no palliative care, not even company, makes my blood run cold.

The start of the end of babies being taken for adoption, despite the mothers wanting their babies, was the Adoption Act 1976. Around this time abortions became more widely available so girls were pressurised into abortion instead of adoption. The Abortion Act came in 1967 but abortions were rarely availble on the NHS for some years after that.
"Shotgun marriages" with young couples being forced into marriage became rare around then as well.
At that time it was also frowned upon for couples to live together without marrying and homosexual acts were illegal until 1967, along with lots of racism.
The "good old days" were not so good. 60s music and fashion were good but social attitudes were awful.

My great-great grandmother was a single mother in the 1880s - the birth certificates say 'Illegitimate'.

My aunt and uncle had a baby when they were teenagers in 1972 - they were told to marry and so it was a shotgun wedding!!

I was a teenage single mother aged 18 in 2005, and there didn't seem much stigma back then, other than the usual benefits bashing that is even more rife today.

I think a lot depended on your family background. I'm from a working class family in Ireland and I do think working class families were more likely to look after their own. My aunt had a baby in the early seventies and there was never a question that she wouldn't have her baby and stay at home. My grandmother wasn't exactly overjoyed but it was very much "well these things happen and we will deal with it" type of situation. When I was in school in the 80s and 90s there was always several children in the class from single parent families or unmarried mothers as single mothers were called at that time. I'd say over here it was the 90s when attitudes really changed. I think in more deprived areas there was less of the whole what would the neighbours think kind of attitude. I do know an old family neighbour had three children and no husband in the early 1950s and then she married but that was very unusual as it's still mentioned when her name comes up. I think family support was essential.

That’s sad. I’m guessing it’s on the same line as giving babies who were born seriously ill, chlroal
hydrate to essentially euthanise them

I know someone who was born in 1970 to unmarried parents (not sure how old) and was adopted. Their parents later went on to marry each other and have more children which has given this person lifelong issues with rejection.

My own mum married my dad in 1981 having been divorced (previous marriage was childless) and apparently a lot of people including my dad’s mum (who died when I was 2 so I never really knew her) were really awful about dad marrying a divorcee.

I very recently discovered that she went as far as getting my birth certificate amended so it showed her name prior to marriage as her maiden name, not her previous married name, as she didn’t want having a divorced mother to be a stigma for me in the future! Dad had registered my birth completely correctly giving her previous married name, but he said she was livid about it!

We had similar in my family too. The babies mother obviously never got over it and his sibling was very keen that we remembered him when she was dying of old age. Awful.

@Sosadsolangafter that is awful -but I’m sure they did do the best they could for that poor baby it from what you’ve said about them.

I can’t bear hearing stories like this since I became a mother myself - I can’t deal with the idea of tiny innocent babies suffering (in the news as well, seems to have been several cases recently)

Contraception was hard to get in the late 60s and early 70s. I remember getting the uni doctor to prescribe me the pill, and going to the chemist and handing it in. I remember them coming in from the back and calling my name as "Mrs M" in spite of the fact that my prescription indicated clearly that I was single.

60s music and fashion were good but social attitudes were awful.

But it was in that decade that attitudes changed on a large enough scale to make it possible for MPs and Lords to vote for changes in the law, which came thick and fast from the mid to late 60s on.

My family had two very different experiences of pregnancy outside of marriage in the 1950s.
One of my maternal aunts was pregnant in 1958 at the age of 17. Her boyfriend proposed and they were going to marry but she changed her mind. The wedding cake was saved to be a christening cake. She went to live with her auntie for a few months and then went to a mother and baby home to have her son. The plan was that he would then be adopted at 6 weeks. My auntie changed her mind about adoption after she saw the emotional turmoil one of her roommates was left in. My grandmother had visited her and my auntie said she couldn't give up her son and my grandma said "fine, leave your dad to me". My grandfather said it was fine and it was their family and their businesss and nobody else's concern. My family were working class but my grandparents were considered "respectable" and certainly nobody said something either to them or to my auntie. My cousin is 8 years younger than my mum and 24 years older than me.

On my dad's side his auntie (my great aunt) was pregnant at about 19 and unmarried, this would have been around 1956 in Battersea. Her father threw her out onto the street quite literally and when my grandmother went to act as mediator he threw my great aunt's suitcase at them both. Her baby was a girl and went into a Foster situation similar to the one show for Colette in CTMW. She saw Jane at weekends for a day travelling from Battersea to somewhere in Kent. The Foster family wanted to adopt Jane but my great-auntie said no for the first 2 years then the Foster family moved further away and so because she could no longer travel to see her baby she agreed to adoption. My great grandfather never saw the baby and never saw my great auntie again either. My great auntie died in the late 80s having tried to reconcile with her daughter but Jane had not wanted to meet her. My great grandfather was a massive hypocrite as he was living with another woman while his wife (my great grandmother) was an invalid in hospital for years following a stroke.