AIBU to think the term illegitimate children is outdated and offensive?

[TheAverageJoanne]

I heard someone talking about illegitimate children this morning. I thought that disappeared in the 60s, except perhaps on the TV show where people are reunited with babies given up for adoption. It's offensive and unfair.

defintley outdated but offensive is probably more debateble. I would say it doesn't have the stigma or strength that it used to. My sister is technically illegitamite.
She laughs about it, my mum can't even stand a small joke about it and the one time we tried she left the room crying and we got a rollicking from our dad.
My sister had two illegitamite children so clearly it didn't have a long term effect.

My husband on the other hand insisted on being married before we had kids, and loves game of thrones but winches at bastard because he is senstitve to being born out of wedlock. Society has thankfully moved on so for alot of people I don't think parents martial status even registers and if you called them illegitamte the would just think you were strange rather than be offended

I always thought of legit as in law, meaning they would inherit, and if they're not recognised as being, then they wouldn't automatically?
Haven't there been cases where a child didn't inherit what their siblings did, because their parents were not married/not named on birth certificate, whereas married people can automatically put their name on?
Maybe now that's not what it means, and people have said the laws are changing so unmarried people will have the same rights as married.

The term I never heard used is bastard-I was quite old before I realised what it actually meant-as a teenager I was shocked when an adult was talking about a bastard royal!

It’s a legal descriptor

Not any more

Your information is very out of date.

Outdated due to stigmatisation-
like some diagnoses - e.g. manic depressive
now called Bipolar affective disorder
Manic was deemed stigmatising

My 4 kids are illegitimate.

My eldest, who did some genealogy as part of his home ed, found out thst they were all technically bastards. He found that HILARIOUS.

My 65 year old parents and my 89 year old grandma both had no issues or even batted an eyelid at me being an unwed mother.

There is no need to use any derogatory term at all thank you. They are just children. Ordinary children. You dont go round calling children with married parents legitimate do you.

I'm an American adoptee, my fathers parents both came over from Scotland. Both died before I came along.

My mother once said it was good they were gone before they adopted me, that they'd never have accepted me and would've called me a foundling. I didn't wash up on shore in a basket lol, that word choice was so odd.

So I can live with illegitimate vs foundling 😂

Yes it's horrible. I can't say I've heard it used in any official communications or by anyone publicly. I guess individuals online might use it to be condescending. Or maybe Reform or Remove or whatever it's called, they probably love language like that.

@GaaNeenthanks! That makes sense, I was worried i might’ve been inadvertently offending people in work!

But even for legal purposes surely your parents don't have to be married to convey legitimacy? If your father's (or other mother's) name is on your birth certificate you are perfectly "legitimate".

Outdated because of statutes. Years ago. There’s no distinction between children whose parents were married to each other at the time of birth and those whose parents were not.

No, the legal meaning, when it was a legal category, was a child born to parents who were not married. (Though the presumption was legally that the man to whom the mother was married, if she was, was the father.)

Sometimes we cause offense without meaning to...
For lack of the least-offensive term to use in an ongoing conversation, perhaps...or for a myriad of reasons.

It's education over time, some of it self-education. If someone is made aware and insists on using a term....that's offensive.

Wow. Amazing that 30% want to keep it. I am married and my dc are so called legitimate, but why would I prefer that other (unmarried) people’s children were not??!

What term would you prefer the grandmother used? Does she need to use an entire sentence to describe that the children have unmarried parents? Should she clarify if those parents are together or separate?

Is it really the word or do you just not like being reminded that statistically children within marriage have higher measures of success. While it likely isn’t the marriage itself that magics those outcomes, the pattern still exists.

For being judgemental? She's probably 60 odd, so born in the 60s, not the 1840s. Clearly comes across as a snooty comment, I'm sure her darling children didn't sink so low as to procreate outside of wedlock 🙄

She can have absolutely no idea whether the parents of an entire nursery of children are married or not. She’s presumably basing this on the children using both parents’ surnames, which she thinks implies unmarriedness rather than feminism. It’s a pretty outdated view. DS uses both our surnames and we’re married. So do several of his friends. In his primary, where I knew most of the parents of his class quite well, about one third of the children used both parents’ surnames, and of those most were married parents..

She didn't need to mention it at all! Why was it relevant in a post office queue? (I think that's where OP said the comment was made)

Are you talking about before there were birth certificates, why any need for presumption? You also aknowledge that illegitimacy is now no longer a legal term or relevant. If so, then it's not relevant to OPs question; the term 'illegitimate child' is extremely out-dated and no longer acceptible. It's in the bin with 'half-caste', 'living in sin' and carry on jokes.

Gosh yes. I can’t believe I’ve never thought about how awful this term is. It’s disgraceful

Trouble is any term that is used to make a distinction between children whose parents were not married at their birth may sound judgemental and offensive.

I can't think there's need for a distinction nowadays if the father is named on the birth certificate, anyway.

So yeah broadly speaking yanbu.

Maybe she meant to say illiterate kids as it was a nursery…

You would be suprised at how people mix up words.

It’s only relevant for hereditary titles - king/queen of dngland, and the nobility.

the nobility also explicitly exempted themselves from legal changing sex - titles go to the oldest male child and if a girl child legally changes sex to be male they aren’t allowed to change their place in the line of succession.

so for all practical purposes it is not relevant