To be angry with my mother over her attitude towards lies she has told me

[theworkofsatan]

I have previously posted about my mother but I need to know if I am being unreasonable now before I speak to her.

I'm getting married and I lost my short form birth certificate (which is the only birth certificate I have ever seen), so I ordered a copy from the GRO.

It arrived on Friday and I thought it was a bit strange that my birth was not registered for four years after my date of birth. There was also a note on the certificate that said that the certificate had been issued upon the order of the registrar, which again was a bit strange.

So I messaged my mum about it and she told me that she and my dad (who died when I was 13) were never married and that she was not prepared to talk about it on the phone. She said it was complicated and that they were not together when I was born. She said I would have to wait until July (when she comes over from Spain - she lives there).

As far as I knew my parents were married. She said they were married and she had his last name.

I don't know why this has upset me so much but I think it's a combination of the lying (for 40 years), or whether it's because she is so bloody judgemental about me and my life. Every time I see her she criticises me and my choices in life, my parenting skills etc.

I have now had two days to think about this and I am feeling quite cross about the whole thing. Am I overreacting?

"It's been my experience that family members who are most judgemental tend to have skeletons."

Yep! My paternal grandmother accused my parents of "having to get married". I'm their first-born and came into this world two years after their wedding. I have no idea whether my mother miscarried or whatever before I was born, Mum said not and really don't care either way. I remember the day that my father finally did the maths and the penny dropped, and understood that his mother was five months up the duff when she walked up the aisle.

Mote/beam etcetera

You don't sound the type to be able to forget all about it.

Compos right though, about the reason for the introduction of short birth certs.

It makes me wonder, mulling it over, whether in '78 a re-registration without sight of the marriage cert could have happened after all. I'm pretty sure it shouldn't have happened, but that's not the point.

Maybe it was just drawn out divorce (or no divorce) from 1st wife, and your mum's white lie to protect you all from stigma.

Got any wedding planning to distract you?

You're not over-reacting OP. My mother has told me a series of lies for many years - lies that have had a huge, negative impact on us all as her siblings actually - then SHE is annoyed at my reaction to her lies...her attitude is 'oh well its done now' & thats it. All she ever does is give vague explanations for anything thats happened anyway. She is very good at NOT talking, then apportioning blame for others' reactions to that. Currently Im the bad one as I won't put up with her behaviour any longer, so she gets busy aiming to turn my siblings against me, and then us all against each other. Anything apart from facing up to what she's done.

She is also nosey in the extreme when it comes to my DCs, as if she is in competition with me as their mother. Thankfully my DCs are now teens and used to her antics. They love her but take her with a pinch of salt and will just laugh at any attempts to compare her mothering skills with mine.

Until a person has been in the same situation, they can never know the acute hurt you feel when the woman who gives birth to you has a casual attitude towards situations that have a big impact on your life, and then sits back whilst you bear that burden. Good luck with talking to your mum, OP. Im 50 now and havent had a straight answer from my mum in years so Ive given up/ Albeit I have to cope with the calls and comments 'I dont hear anything much from you, whats going on'. Whats going on is at this age, my peace is worth more than ruminating over my mother's choice as to the way she's conducted her life. My life is just as important as hers...just as your life is as important as your mother's. Dont let her disrupt it any longer

When my late mother was asked by HR to produce her birth certificate to enable her to retire later on in the year she found she was six months older than she thought. Grandmother was still alive and gave a rubbish reason 'to stop family from abroad coming to stay.'She was fifth of six children so not the normal explanation. Older sisters not old enough to be her mum. We shall never know the reason but my brother has been doing lots of family history and posh and prim Grandmother was a Big Fat Liar about lots and lots. Also mum only ever had one passport and that was when she was sixteen. How did GM get one issued with the wrong date?

If it makes OP or anyone else feel better to see how endemic such shenanigans used to be, THIS (Family Secrets: The Things We Tried to Hide (Themes In British Social History) ) Is a fascinating read

Sounds like there are several issues here, all coming down to the difficult relationship you have with your difficult sounding mother. You deserve to know the facts.

Your mother needs to talk to you now - not at her leisure. If she is superior and judgemental about your behaviour, then you must be seething that she has not been straight with you.

Your father could have signed a declaration of paternity or the other paternity form and not have needed to attend the reregistering. Or a step parent adoption possibly.

With a step parent adoption you can only get the original cert if you can correctly identify yourself perhaps you had a different name.

A bigamous marriage would not just be removed from the records it would appear as a annulment so the cert should still exist

Many of these things are done with the best of intentions.
Taking on a grand child as their own
Lying about birth/wedding dates so they tie up nicely etc
The intentions might get lost in the mists of time.

Hopefully when you get the answers you might understand the reasons why.

I'm not suggesting your mother is right in withholding information, but it sounds like she wants to explain in person.

I've read the Deborah Cohen book, very good isn't it Fumblin? I heard her give a paper at a conference and was utterly transfixed. Pretty impressive as I was jetlagged, hungover and crapping myself about giving my own paper.

If only there were more of those Compos

I've had it all in my family. My Great-Gp's were apparently not married to each other, but to different people. They had 7 children, and my Great-GF had 6 children with his legal wife, all of whom were born within months of each other (children from the 2 families). The 2 families lived about 3 streets away from each other in the East End of London, so the families must have known each other and gone to the same school, probably in the same class in most cases.

One of their sons and his wife (My GM Brother) adopted his illegitimate child, they had no other children. He was on both the birth certificate, with the birth mother and the adoption certificate with his wife, the adoptive mother.

One of their daughters, (my GM sister), bought up with her, apparently never had a birth certificate, but GGF legal wife had a child registered with the same name and the same birthdate as my GM sister. This caused major problems when they tried to register her for an ID card just before WW2, but it was smoothed over, presumably with the collusion of the legal wife.

No-one knew until I started to research it for a University project. The cats-bum mouths from the older relatives had to be seen to be believed. "But they were sooooo respectable"

I cant wait for the 1920 census to be published so I can find out more

About a year after my Dad died I got a phone call out of the blue from a man claiming to be my older half-brother. Turned out Dad hadn't just been married once before like he'd told mum, he'd also had an earlier marriage and had two children. They'd been searching for him through the Salvation Army and had got a letter to say he had died, but with a previous address. They went to that address and the neighbours told them the area I had moved to and they found me in the phone book.

It has made me question everything about my relationship with my Dad.

I may just watch too much Special Victims Unit, but perhaps you should go easy on your mum until you hear her story as it might be something more painful or personal that she really cant do over the phone, such as rape? Probably just have an overactive imagination, but giving her the benefit of the doubt...

I may just watch too much Special Victims Unit, but perhaps you should go easy on your mum until you hear her story as it might be something more painful or personal that she really cant do over the phone, such as rape? Probably just have an overactive imagination, but giving her the benefit of the doubt...

I'm interested in knowing at what point other people's secrets become yours to know or your information?

If both are your actual parents is the marital status and reregistering information that belongs to them,you or both?

In Scotland a death certificate shows whether a person is married, single, widowed etc and gives the name of their spouse. I don't know if it's the same in England, but ordering up your father's death certificate, which you can do for a fee, might provide useful information.

Well, you now have the perfect comeback if she criticizes you again...

I'm sorry, it must suck. Please don't let it tarnish your wedding, though. That's the beginning of something new.

Your starting point is to see if there's a marriage certificate. You can search both names in an online index, and then order the certificate.

You might then be able to do some digging. If, for example, your father was at the other end of the country until after you were born, it might suggest that your biological father was someone else. If he was living close by, however, then it may well just be a re-registration after a late marriage.