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?

Sorry, what?

I was born mid-70s and adopted. My mum was 19 and her boyfriend ”wasnt marriage material". That was Ireland though. She came to England at 4m pregnant to stay with her brother and that's where I was born.

The adoption agency tried desperately to keep us together but she was convinced that I'd be better in a family with married parents. I don't even know if she told her parents about the pregnancy.
So possibly by mid 7ps it was changing, in England at least!

Sorry. Chloral Hydrate was given to babies with things like Spina Bifida before it was properly diagnosed. It was seen as kinder than letting the baby live

Tbh, as horrible and sad as that is, if the alternative was literally the suggestion of abandonment to death, then it was probably kinder.

Or you know, adequate painkillers, love and decent palliative care. But that didn't seem to be an option 😢

A relative of mine was born in the 1950s to a single mother. She was brought up by her grandmother, with her mother working away, and only returned to live with her, as a teenager, after her mother married.

Her mother refused to say who the father was ", and it was suspected he was married.

In 1960s I lived next door to a "home for unmarried mothers." The inmates were a procession of miserable middle class teen girls who had been sent away by their "respectable" family "before the baby showed"to conceal their disgrace/ pregnancy from public knowledge. The baby would then be taken at birth for adoption and she would return home pretending it never happened. Adoption agencies mainly dealt with this unlimited supply of "illegitimate" babies of unmarried mothers, rehomed to infertile couples.

Unmarried mothers who kept the "illegitimate" baby faced huge social discrimination. Abortion was illegal until 1967. Before that same year, the NHS didn't offer contraception to unmarried women. Nor did The Family Planning Association. (back then, still a charity)

When I started having sex I was determined never to have an unwanted pregnancy like those poor girls. Back in 1964, both my (female) NHS GP and the FPA refused to prescribe the Pill because I was single.

NHS GP " The ONLY contraception you need is the word NO. And NO is the only answer you'll get from me".

FPA clinic; I arrive for my appointment, check in, take a seat. Receptionist shouts across crowded waiting room "MISS Bazooka" I stand up. "MISS Bazooka, I saw you are not wearing a ring. Are you married? " "No." "Are you engaged, and planning to marry within the next six weeks? " No". "Then we won't see you. Goodbye".

I had to pay a private Dr willing to supply the Pill on private prescription.

That’s terrible. It’s a good job girls can access contraception much easier now

Do you happen to remember what the book was called Twizbe? I'm really interested in this topic and the comments from Mischance are really useful too for a project I'm working on.

As recently as 2000 there was stigma attached to teenage pregnancies and unethical practice surrounding this. I was the victim of a horrific incident to protect my middle class family from the shame and inconvenience.

My dad was born to a teenager, and adopted from a mother and baby home. I think there was considerable pressure on his mother to make that decision. Have got the records in the house but they’re very scant and details of his mother are changed - she’s listed as being in her late 20s and having a professional job.

He was adopted to a couple who had lost their first child at 2 days old (and was named after him).

I never met his mother - she died relatively young and was a very, very troubled soul - as indeed is my dad, I don’t think he will ever feel truly happy or settled within himself.

Horrendously sad situation all round.

It was much the same in the USA. In the 70's girls from "decent" (middle class) families either had a quick qwdding or were sent off to "visit an aunt' for a year and came back thin and childless.
Girls with no family or if the family was chaotic were taken to court by Social Workers who declared them morally deficient and they were sent to maternity homes to have the child. The SW's arranged adoption immediately and the girl stayed to "work out her time" until the baby was legally adopted.
Having an out-of-wedlock baby was considered an act of moral turpitude and many jobs were closed to women who kept the child (or were even exposed as having had one). Teaching was a closed profession and so was nursing.

I think there was a relative on my mother’s father’s side too - I think his mother had an illegitimate son (and was indeed herself illegitimate, as we discovered doing family tree research) . I think her husband (not the son’s father) used that against her as a means of control - I remember my my grandmother saying when she met them she was struck by the fact that mother in law was absolutely terrified of her husband, could never sit down and relax - but couldn’t do anything about it because she had this other child and husband was providing for her - she had to put up with it because she should be grateful to him . I think, I might be remembering that wrongly but I’m pretty sure that’s what I was told.

@Edithisoverthere I just looked it up. It was called In the Family Way.

Another good book to read alongside is the English marriage. That has more of the background to marriage laws.

Thank you so much Twizbe!

My cousin had her child aged 16, in 2010. Her mum was in the delivery suite with her and had to ask one of the midwives to leave during labour has she continually made comments about my cousins age, asking had they considered adoption and really pushing the idea that the baby would be better raised by parents the appropriate age.

My husbands mother was unmarried when she had him age 18. She was basically frogmarched up with aisle with the abusive shitbag father. That lead to 25 years of un happy marriage, verbal, physical, financial and emotional abuse, culminating in adultery and divorce. Even my husband admits that his parents should never have married and probably wouldn’t have had do if it hadn’t been for the social expectations of 1968/69.

For those talking about the grandparents stepping in and pretending to be the kids parent in positive tones... that happened to my parent and it was hugely damaging. They didn't find out that their older "sister" was their mum until they were 14, when a neighbour told them. Perhaps it was made to work in a spirit of honesty and love in some families, but all it did was cause more shame and trauma down the generations in mine.

In the 1970's it wasn't acceptsble. By the 1980's it was beginning to be ok.

I was conceived in 1967 and my parents married in early 1968 I was born in August 1968 in a maternity home for unmarried mothers as my mum wasn't accepted to the local hospital as I was conceived before marriage 🫣. This was in South London in 1968 not 1868!!! The absurdity of it still lives with me 54 years later. My daughter was born in 1992 and they still called my name as Miss Cakey Bun with an emphasis on the Miss... Hertfordshire in 1992 not long ago.
The absurdity of how women are treated and have been treated for hundreds of years regarding their marital status and childbirth has a hell of a lot to do with religion and it's desire to control women.

My great great grandmother was a single parent in 1870. She just carried on living with her parents and her son who was acknowledged as her son. She went on to marry (not his dad) and have more children. All very modern!

One grandmother 1920 who gave birth 3 months after marriage her husband had tb and died shortly after she remarried twice (and elderly courtesy aunt told me they called her Mrs UK as she had married an Irishman and Welshman and an Englishman she outlived all three)
A lot of working class women left abusive husbands and lived with another partner -- I know in my family history of the children of this women were judged at risk and aged 14 were sent to Convents to work in Laundries and be trained so they could be servants and children's maids to rich RC parishioners' families.
Read up on factory schools and these laundries regarding poor girls and they didnt get paid during their training but had to provide their bedding

There was definitely still social stigma around single motherhood in the 1990s. Look up the Conservatives' Back to Basics campaign.
I remember a sitcom in the late 80s/early 90s about a couple living together but not married, and this was considered to be remarkable enough to be the angle for the programme.

I would be interested in this book - what was it called if you can remember?

I’ve got an older half brother I only found out about recently and this was thanks to him being born in the sixties to my dad (a teenager) and my brother’s bio mum. The bio mum was also a teenager but at the time, you could only really keep your baby if you got married or stayed unmarried but risked the shame of being a single mum if the dad wasn’t interested. I don’t think there were any benefits like today so you were also stuffed financially.

It was just a fling so they left my brother to be adopted and that was that 😢 My dad went on to have 5 more children but I feel sad that it was only social stigma that meant my brother had to be adopted.

@IJustHadToLookHavingReadTheBook lol, it's a very interesting book.

It was called in the family way. A good companion book is the English marriage.

Both talk about marriage laws and impact of those.