Get writing Bralee ! I would buy it!

There are some threads on Gransnet which I think are social history. There should be an Archive. Mumsnet have Classics perhaps we could have archives.

That's a great idea. You should contact GNHQ.

One of my dearest friends became pregnant by the charmer who came from a nearby town to work in the garage in our village. He scarpered and she was too scared to tell her parents (I was petrified of her Mum!) so continued to go to work until, one day, her waters broke at work. Her parents were horrified and her mother said the baby was to be adopted. However, her father went to the hospital, took one look at the baby and said she could keep him. My friend's father was a very gentle man who never usually stood up to the battle axe (usually spending hours in his garden), but this time he did.

My friend and her family looked after, and loved, the boy who was born with severe learning difficulties until he died a couple of years ago, aged 41, of a heart attack. I think the fact that they lived in a village where it was almost commonplace for some families to have a whole series of children with unacknowledged fathers made it easier.

My friend never married but just before her son died had met up with the boy/man who was her first boyfriend and they recently got engaged.

My Mum was thrilled - not only had my friend failed her 11+, while I had passed mine, but she 'got into trouble' too!

During WW1, a great aunt who was a mill girl in Lancashire met and became pregnant by the son of a prominent local solicitor. He was away fighting when she wrote to tell him but he had died in action. Her family sent her to stay with an aunt until the baby was born. His family found the letter and came and persuaded her to let them have the baby. She never saw the baby or the family again. This all came out after she died, told to the family by the only sister she had trusted with the story. It probably explains why she was a bit scary as her moods were so unpredictable.

Stansgran - I agree this thread is a a classic for social history, but I'm not sure about preserving it.
I thought a long time before deciding to post my story, still not sure I was right. Maybe if the people you write about are still alive it's better not to post.

I met a young married couple in the late sixties who had a baby they gave up for adoption because they weren't married at the time. I thought that very sad as they were boyfriend/girlfriend but both living with their parents when their baby was born. In 1978 I met another married couple and they said they had been through a lot together as they had given up their first baby for adoption, as they weren't married and didn't want their parents to find out. They were living a long way from their home towns so their parents wouldn't have known the woman was pregnant. When I met them they had been married for a few years and had two small boys. It seemed a very extreme thing to give your baby away just so you didn't have to tell your parents. The baby would have been born in early 1970 when opinions were not as rigid as previous years.

A lot of working class people like my family were used to poverty and exhausted mothers and fathers who worked very hard but could never get out of the bit.

I do know a woman who wrote a book about her life in a children's home, she found the libel laws restricted much

Somebody once said that "your parents do something very unpleasant to your brain" or words to that effect. I can't stand the holier than thou attitude of hypocrites.

jimorourke, you're probably thinking of the Philip Larkin poem 'They f* you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do......But they were f***ed up in their turn, by folks in old-style coats and hats....'

Thank you at least I know I have sold one book! Mumofmadboys x

I am an illegitimate child, born in 1935.

I grew up in a desperately poor, hard working, loving family. My mum obviously, who had to go out to work cleaning other women's houses. My grandad, who died in 1947 when I was 12. My aunt, who was a polio survivor who spent much of her life, from 1926 onwards, sitting on the floor from where she did everything - cooked, baked, sewed, knitted, made leather gloves, repaired clothes, you name it. And looked after me. And my gran, who died when I was 3.

My great-grandmother, gran's mother, was a remarkable woman. I never knew her, but she lived in the Dales and had several children to different fathers. My gran was one. She had one son, who had a successful career on the railways, as was possible in those times - guys could start out at the bottom and work their way into responsible positions. And my great-great-grandmother also had my great-gran out of wedlock. Young women had to go out to work, to live-in other people's houses, and it's hard to believe now how vulnerable they were. 'Sexual harassment at work' hadn't been thought of.

Anyway, it's my belief that it was my gran, with her background and history, who was responsible for me growing up at home and not being sent away. And my aunt too. Apparently they all 'fell in love with me when they saw my little face'.

I was loved and cared for, went to grammar school, eventually into nursing, then to university as a mature student. Had a happy marriage until he died in 1992.

I discovered a lot of things when I was studying family history in the late 90s. Because my mum was a single woman she was called up for forces service in 1943. I do have some memories of things being said over my innocent head, people who came to our house 'you can always put her in a home'. That didn't happen, but I believe it was a near thing for a while.

I haven't watched 'Call the Midwife' although I did read the first book in the series.

By the way, my book 'All my father's children' is now out of print, but I have it as a JPEG file.

What a pity she didn't get to say what she felt she ought to and see what possible defence there can be for the things she omitted. My dear wife was in a home, there was one creep in there I would like to strangle but as far as I know he's dead and it was long ago. But she still feels the pain and indignity she suffered.

Margrete - you must be so proud of both your remarkable family and your own achievements. Will you also be writing a book? Like Bralee's it would be well worth reading.

Hello Elrel, if I had your email address I could send you the JPEG file of the book and also the 'Update'. My email is: [email protected]

Yes, I think I achieved a lot, given that I grew up in a village where my mum was the only unmarried mum. Or at least, the only one in public. There was incest. A girl who grew up near me had an 'aunt' who was really her mum. The woman she thought of as her mum was actually her granny. Get the picture? But that was thought of as being OK because it was all hush-hush.

My very respectable and hard-working granny Hannah lied on her wedding day. I've never been able to find any trace of the man she put down as her father, stonemason, deceased. There was an awful lot of lying and things swept under the carpet.

It wasn't until many years later when I saw TV programmes about Barnardo's and about 'child emigrants' to Commonwealth countries, that I realised just how lucky I'd been.

I have read right through this thread with a nagging feeling that there was something missing from the discussion. It seems to me that there is no consideration given to the circumstances in which the women and girls became pregnant. Nowadays, we would draw a distinction between those who fell pregnant within an on-going relationship and those who were coerced into sex e.g a 'one night stand', sexual harassment at work, and actual abuse e.g. incest, underage sex, rape. It seems that in the 50/60s no matter the circumstances, it was always the girl's own fault.

Bear in mind that many young women were very naïve as matters sexual were often not discussed in the home or school. I firmly believed, until I reached my teens, that babies were sent by God to happy couples who had been married for a while. Thankfully my mother ensured that I had full and frank information - including the danger of being under the influence of drink - well before I had my first date or boyfriend. The only session of formal sex/relationship education I had concentrated on warning us that once a boy had been 'led on' he was unable to control his urges and couldn't stop, so it was the girl's responsibility to ensure that things did not get out of hand. Various strategies such as always being part of a group, avoiding being alone together and staying sober, were recommended. Conversely, the boys, being taught in a separate group were told that their responsibility was to always carry a condom!

With these attitudes prevalent it is little wonder that blame always fell on the 'innocent' girl.

I was on the edge of this, as I got pregnant in 1973, giving birth to DD in 1974. My parents were great, but the next door neighbours told my Dad we should be ashamed (he told them where to go) - and even DD's paternal grandmother told me not to go round to her house so that all the neighbours could see what condition I was in!

When she was about 8 years old, DD asked me what a bastard was as she had been called it at school. I told her it meant someone whose parents weren't married, so she was one - and she heaved a sigh of relief as she thought it meant she was a 'spastic'!

It would be very interesting to read a mirror of the stories on this thread, from the fathers' point of view. They are absent here literally and figuratively.

If the women had no choice, what choice would they have had?

I was working in a psychiatric hospital in the 80s and remember one of the nurses telling me that they had several women who had been there for over 20 years who were put there because they had had illegitimate babies.
These poor girls would have become completely institutionalised after about 6 months and probably developed psychiatric disorders as a result of their incarceration.
A lot of the above posts are heartbreaking and made me cry. What courage and determination to fight to keep your baby against your family's wishes......there but for the grace of God etc.

It was if you were in that situation I guess!

I think I am one of the fortunate ones. I became pregnant when I was a student in the early 60s. My parents were shocked and upset initially. My boyfriend and I were married quickly and we are still happily together 51 years on.

I've just finished reading Jane Robinson's book, a very enlightening and interesting read.

The irony is that of all these unforgiving parents of pregnant unmarried daughters in earlier decades, many were probably illegitimate themselves without knowing. In the days before divorce became a fairly routine and accepted procedure, many people (mostly husbands) simply walked away from a marriage, went to another town and married someone else, albeit bigamously. I had a very prim and strait-laced paternal grandmother whose disapproval of most things blighted her family's life. Recently a search of family records suggests a very high probability that she was the product of a bigamous marriage - how I would have loved to have been the one to tell her!

Slightly off subject but relevant.........

My DD was born 4 months after we got married in the mid 1970s. my parents were happy to have a GD and brushed aside any nasty remarks . My DBs said nothing. It was one of my female cousins who decided to write and tell me exactly what she thought of me and the disgrace I had brought on the family name etc etc. This missile arrived on my birthday and I was very upset by it. I had not seen my cousin for 10 years as she lived abroad. She had 3 DDs and was 8 months pregnant when she wrote to me. A few weeks later she wrote saying "as my parents had accepted the child" she sent some dresses for my DD - which went straight in the bin. When my DD died suddenly aged 7 months she wrote expressing her sympathy to my parents as she "could not write to me".

At the funerals of both her parents I was very polite - good manners as I had been taught.

I have had nothing to do with her since.