Something potentially strange about PIL engagement.

[Talksense]

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.

Yes it seems like society was much more split on the issue and people encountered different attitudes. My DM (with v liberal parents) lived with a boyfriend in the early 80s without any problem. When she married in the late 80s she didn’t change her name, but after she had a baby it was made clear in her office that she should start using her married name, because it wouldn’t be quite right for her to be “Miss X” when everyone knew she’d been on (six weeks at the time…) maternity leave.

Her cousin lived with a boyfriend in the late 80s/early 90s and her mother was absolutely furious about it, and very cross when she wore white at her wedding- she wasn’t “entitled”.

Even now with co habiting definitely the norm, it seems very usual that people, both my peers and their DC, marry before having children. I know it's not "compulsory" anymore, but it does seem to be the thing that moves many relationships from partners to marriage.

I was a working class child in the 80's, my parents divorced. I don't recall it being frowned upon apart from by my grandmother who had moved after remarriage and thought she was a bit more middle class.

I’ve also just remembered that my dad’s brother and his partner, who had 2 children together in the mid to late 80’s, never married either. Both had been married before and had children from a previous marriage.

@Nitebook I agree- I don’t recognise the ‘everyone had in married parents’ thing…. I was born in the late 80’s in an upper working class type place in an old mill town in the north and every friend I had throughout primary/secondary has married parents. My parents had me then married a few years later and it was a ‘thing’ when my friends found out. My mum told me not to tell people!

The contraceptive Pill was in use from about the late 60s, and the practice of adoption started to faze out around the same time. Society was changing - being an unmarried mother was no longer a big deal . Your PIL would have been quite "normal" in the 80's if they were living together without being married.

@ShippingNews the pill existed in the 60s but wasn’t necessarily easy to get- my mums friends had to have their husbands go to the doctor to sign a form to say the gp could prescribe their wives the pill.

1983 was 40 years ago - I think social attitudes have changed a lot in that time.
Anyone remember the sitcom 'Just the two of us' about a couple 'living in sin' in the 80s and the man had a very disapproving mother? While people did live together and dome had children, there was still some social disapproval.
I remember my mum getting hassle in the street because she was a childminder looking after a black baby and people assumed it was hers and had a go at her over it - attitudes and behaviour really were very different. My mum's friend was an unmarried mum and her parents barely spoke to her, they were ashamed of her.
So while living together might have been happening, I still think there was social judgment going on from some parts of society and marriage was still an expectation.

Weell they would have been born in the 40s themselves though? And maybe wouldn't you take on the attitudes of your formative years? By that I mean my mum was born in 1940s had my sister in the 60s but was unmarried and treated badly because of it. I was born in 1980s. Things were more relaxed by then but my mum definitely felt she had to get married before having me.

Prospect House in Hoylake, closed around 1977ish.

15 years is only a decade off another generation though, the major change was in the 1970’s. I would say there was still some disapproval in the 1980’s.

When I was at primary school in the 1970’s only one child at my small school had an unmarried Mother. It was a small primary school but that was disapproved of locally.

Got the pill no hassle in 1986 aged 16. Moved in with idiot in 1989. Loads of unmarried people living together then, also lots of single mothers. Full on working class.

A lot changed I think between 1981 and 1989

There was a revolution in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood norms between 1980 and 1990. Births outside marriage went from rare to routine within a generation. Your DPIL's story is believable for the mid- eighties .