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Original poster

Something potentially strange about PIL engagement.

89 replies

Talksense · 02/04/2023 20:43

PIL are in their 70s and had DP in the mid 1980s. FIL was married before meeting MIL but divorced as his then wife didn’t want kids.

PIL went to see the doctor as they had been trying for a baby for 12 months without any luck before conceiving DP a few months later. Apparently as they were getting older they wanted to focus on having a baby over a wedding. MIL was giving me unwanted advice on how to conceive when all this came out. I didn’t think much of it apart from MIL trying to pry if we were trying to convince/plans to start a family. DP believes the story to be nonsense and that she’s just trying to hide that FIL only proposed as she was pregnant/DP wasn’t an accident.

Im not sure, surely PIL living together, not even engaged must have been somewhat out of the ordinary. I couldn’t give two hoots if they had a shotgun wedding but actually quite curious on societal norms at the time. PIL are definitely not the hippy types and from two very traditional working class families/communities.

OP posts:

NeverDropYourMooncup · 02/04/2023 21:34

It was perfectly ordinary by the 80s to live together, especially if a) younger or b) divorced. A quarter of births were outside marriage by 1988. And the average age of a first time mother (so including all socioeconomic classes) was 25, which means that anybody in their 30s would have been very conscious of possibly starting to TTC as soon as possible. She'd have been called an Elderly Primagravida had she been 35 and both parents likely would have been nearer the age of a significant proportion of grandparents to be at Antenatal clinics in some areas.

Sorry to disappoint you, but you can't accuse her of lying about this one.

QuillBill · 02/04/2023 21:35

This reminds me of the time my year four dd came home and said they had a new history topic and had I heard of 'the nineties'

DanceMonster · 02/04/2023 21:37

I was born in the mid ‘80s. I have a few friends my age whose parents weren’t married. It wasn’t as common as now but it wasn’t wildly out of the ordinary.

marmaladegranny · 02/04/2023 21:38

The big change to attitudes regarding living together started in the Swinging 60s when the pill became widely available and abortion was available legally.
Now, I am OLD and my parents did have a shotgun wedding before I was born, pre 60s!

Xjshdvf · 02/04/2023 21:40

Just out of interest how did you respond to this? My mil once talked about how long it took them to fall pregnant and it made me completely irrationally really uncomfortable and I think I left the room very quickly.

Phos · 02/04/2023 21:42

I think times had changed by then but they hadn't been changed for very long.

I was shocked when I got some papers from a cousin of my mum's who had been looking at the family tree... my gran always described my great-granny (her MIL) as being strict and prim and proper. Well my grandad's oldest sister was only born 4 months after his parents got married. Not so very strict!!

Phos · 02/04/2023 21:42

Meant to say that was in the early 20s - I'm sure it was scandalous at that time.

IfDreamsWereWings · 02/04/2023 21:44

I find it stranger that you are giving it so much thought!

cpphelp · 02/04/2023 21:48

I was born in 85. My parents divorced when I was about 5 I think.
I had plenty of friends at school who's parents weren't married

GettingThereCharleyBear · 02/04/2023 21:54

Teenager in the 80s, staggered to hear how many people thought cohabiting was the norm then. I wonder what the ACTUAL stats are rather than just anecdotes and poor memories 😄.

Northernlurker · 02/04/2023 21:55

My parents lived together for a couple of months before their wedding in 1975. Dad was moving to the area for work and mum had room in her flat. It made sense. I think you are overthinking.

goodkidsmaadhouse · 02/04/2023 21:56

I was born to unmarried parents in the mid 80s and didn't realise it was so common! There was a picture of my Mum with her name on the wall at my primary school (not sure why - maybe she was a governor?) and I got loads of questions and comments about why our surnames were different.

GettingThereCharleyBear · 02/04/2023 21:57

“In 2014 almost half of all babies were born outside marriage/civil partnership, compared with 42.2% in 2004 and only 8.8% in 1974. This continues the long-term rise in the percentage of births outside marriage/civil partnership, which is consistent with increases in the number of couples cohabiting rather than entering into marriage or civil partnership.”

As I thought - very very much less common in the 1970s than people on here are saying, and wouldn’t have changed hugely by the 80s.

UndercoverCop · 02/04/2023 21:58

My parents had a shotgun wedding in the eighties. More common in WC communities I think, 'make an honest woman of her'. They had a big white wedding booked for 1985, I was born in 1984 they were married in a small ceremony six months before my birthday.....
There was still that pressure then.

UndercoverCop · 02/04/2023 22:01

MIL was unmarried when DH was born and a single mother for the first two years until FIL came along. Bio dad was an abusive arsehole.
Local CofE church refused to christen DH "because he was a bastard" (awful term), that was 1983 on the outskirts of London.

LBFseBrom · 02/04/2023 22:03

Not at all unusual in the 1980s.

Houseyvibe · 02/04/2023 22:09

I was at school in the 80’s and didn’t know anyone whose parents weren’t married. Until 6th form only one person (me) had divorced parents. My eldest didn’t have any children at all in his class whose parents weren’t married and of my contemporaries we all lived with partners before marrying but nobody had kids until they were married

CoachBeard · 02/04/2023 22:13

I was born in ‘66 and all my friends lived with boyfriends before getting married. Two friends didn’t get married until after they had a baby. We were really unusual as we lived separately, me with my parents and him in a flat share and only properly lived together once we were married.
My best friends parents had never married and another friend had divorced parents who both lived with their new partners and weren’t planning on getting married.
The only time there was any really major gossip was when the mother of a school mate of my brother’s moved her boyfriend into their home without splitting with her husband and they all lived quite happily together.

twolilacs · 02/04/2023 22:15

I was first married in the early 80's. Times (and attitudes) were different. The GP of a work colleague of mine getting married the same year as me was reluctant to even prescribe her the pill until a month before her wedding date. I was already on the pill due to horrendously heavy periods, and it had taken a lot of persuading to get my doctor to let me have the pill when I wasn't married.

Yes, having kids out of wedlock was common, but I think that being unmarrled and going to the doctor with fertiity problems would have been far less likely, and the doctor wouldn't have been at all keen to help.

Trumpton · 02/04/2023 22:16

DH and I lived together in London 1971 to 1975 when we got married as his employer was offering a cheap mortgage but you had to be married to access it.
Still together nearly 50 years later. But I joke that I resent those unmarried years as we could have ticked off our Golden Wedding by now!

lemmein · 02/04/2023 22:16

I have no idea of the marital status of my friends parents growing up (I was born 78). Some were still together, others had step-parents, me included - I can't remember it being a big deal.

My DP comes from a very traditional Irish catholic family and didn't know his parents weren't married till he was in his late 20s when he applied for a passport. The name he'd always used (his Dads surname) wasn't his actual name either - he was registered with his mums maiden name, so I guess many people assumed couples were married back then even when they weren't.

My mum was sent away to a mothers and baby home run by the Salvation Army in the early 70s though to have her first baby and had to give him up. I think that was probably more due to her age (15/16) though rather than the 'shame' of being unmarried.

WeAreTheHeroes · 02/04/2023 22:30

It was the Family Reform Act 1987 that removed all remaining legal distinctions between children born to married and unmarried parents. The 1980s were a decade of great social change. Lots of things which had been taboo or frowned upon changed.

FancyFanny · 02/04/2023 22:31

I don't think it was all that unusual to be an unmarried couple in the 1980s, but it was still a lot more common for couples to be married than not.

stinkfaceison · 02/04/2023 22:35

More common than people think . People wore wedding rings and pretended to be married up to the 1970s . If you look at the old Victorian census many women were described as housekeepers. They were co habiting

Messyhair321 · 02/04/2023 22:36

I'm trying to understand what is odd about any of it, sorry I don't see it

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