AIBU to think the term illegitimate children is outdated and offensive?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

Illegitimate implies something that doesnt deserve to exist.

No one knows on here -maybe it was discussion about weddings getting rarer or they'd not been to one in a while- there no real context for the conversation. Just that this very outdated and for some loaded term was used.

Our kids have asked questions or mentioned it with friends when family tree came up or marriage as concept in I think reception class - or when friends circustances change - they move or people move in or out or marriage happen in family - otherwise I would have no idea marital status of most kids parents we've met over the years.

Why is it relevant at all?
I can't imagine why the parents' marital status is relevant here and even if it is, why not say 'they're not married?'

Illegitimate sounds awful.

I am not going to argue about your stats, but that's not the point.

You've articulated what I'm getting at.

I completely agree. It's steeped in misogyny and it's barbaric to refer to an innocent child as illegitimate.

Men created shame around women having babies without being married so that they could control who we have children with and when, and those that suffer the most from this are the children (who got no choice in any of it), but again that's to punish the mother. Like a previous poster said, we often hear the term 'unmarried mum', but never 'unmarried dad'.

I was told by the registrar that technically we should re-register our children's births after we married, but they were adults by then and we have never got round to it...I still don't know if it matters? DH does have another adult child from a previous relationship., but we did our wills after the marriage and the solicitor didnt seem to know about this old law

I'd certainly call it outdated, and it isn't a term that it would even occur to me to use.

I'm somewhat on the fence about whether it is actually offensive. Borderline I think, so I'd avoid it. I think it is fading from use now. I haven't actually heard anyone say it for many years now.

As a granny aged 65 it wouldn't occur to me to use the term nor would I be in the least bit interested or surprised by how many parents were or weren't married when their dc were born.

It really pisses me off when anyone over 60 is considered archaic and likely to hold views typical of time before they were even born!

My parents were born in 1927 and 1934, their language use evolved with the times. They weren't stuck using outdated and offensive terms.

There is no place for the term illegitimate in everyday usage.

It obviously has a legal definition but the term was definitely perjorative in its common usage.
Something legitimate is "acceptable" "true" "real" "meeting certain standards" etc. So the direct implication in the usage of the term illegitimate is that these children are none of those things.

I am not married and have kids.
The term would apply to my kids, but has zero impact on me as it’s just not relevant to my life. I suppose if someone said something defamatory to me directly, and claimed my kids were lesser beings because I had them outside marriage, id probably be irritated. But the father and myself are still together and have been for nearly two decades, that’s actually pretty rare in my circle, so actually I guess weirdly I’m one of the ones fulfilling societal expectations yet might be considered ‘less than’ because the church didn’t bless the union.

Well it means their parents are less likely to stay together, more likely to be poorer (according to statistics) and if they split up, the lower earning parent will be poorer without the legal protections of a marriage contract

Legitimate means lawful. Illegitimate means unlawful, or outside of the
law.
It’s nothing to do with being acceptable or pejorative.

I was doing my family history, and some poor child had ILLEGITIMATE written right across the bottom of his birth certificate!

it's all not quite legitimate....when the sun goes down

20 year ago, so some what outdated, but an Eclipse today so also timely....

No. I’m much older than that and I wouldn’t use the term, haven’t heard it for years. We did nearly all get married in the 60s (when I did) but there has been a continuing growth in blended and single parent families since then.

Which does not equate to be illegitimate in the true sense -
you are referring to inequality

It was still very much in use when I was growing up (70s and 80s), but I haven’t heard it used at all for many years, apart from in history books and period dramas.

It was an odd thing for her to say, no doubt about that! Apart from anything else, how would she even know that all the other children in the nursery were ‘illegitimate’ anyway?

Lawful is one of its meanings

I cant argue with that.
What's that got to do with the usage of the word Illegitimate, though?

Seems to me though you're expanding the thread to have a go at unmarried parents.
I can recognise that unmarried people are less likely to stay together without being judgy about it.

Why punish the child with this awful derogatory word?

Is it to make births outside of marriage unacceptable again?

LEGITIMATE Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster https://share.google/Xi1p13gjGbJRzpFUF

And I said its usage was perjorative not its definition

I don't often agree with this kind of thing, but, yes, I do OP.

It is not 'outside the law' to have a child when you are unmarried. It's perfectly legal.

How does she know they’re illegitimate?

It’s something that gets more common, as you get older!

There's the historical usage, the actual legal definition, the dictionary definition and what I'd call the common usage of it as understood by the proverbial man-on-the-street to describe a child who is born to unwed parents and THAT usage is derogatory.

If I had to describe a child's parental marital status and they were unmarried in a social context there's no way I'd describe that child as being Illegitimate! Like who the heck would?
It is loaded with negative associations.

I'd just say its parents were not married.