That's a lovely thing to say, downtoearth. Thankyou. x

I agree jalima Marelli is a strong lady,you certainly have lots of love to give your daughter and son,[hugs]]x

Royalty had a habit of keeping illegitimate children handy and well-maintained,
Anyone with the prefix 'Fitz' to their surname may well have been descended from royalty and the name 'Fitzroy' means the offspring of the King from 'the wrong side of the blanket' as it was termed in those days.

Marelli you must be a very strong person and I'm so glad you were able to keep your DD.

'angie95*, I do know where you're coming from with the neighbours' possible disapproval! One afternoon , I saw my mother scuttle through the back gate. She told me she'd had to go next door to apologise for the condition I was in [. While I was more or less incarcerated at home, my friend also discovered she was pregnant, and her wedding was arranged very quickly. However, on the way to pick up his hired suit, her groom to be crashed his motorbike, and he was admitted to hospital with 2 broken legs. The wedding took place a couple of weeks later in the hospital. My mother very smugly commented, "Everyone will know N hasn't had her wedding night, now, but there's still a baby on the way." I can remember feeling quite disgusted by there words. I have to say that N's widowed mother was wonderful throughout. They had very little money, but lots of love.
Another thing has just come back to me: I do remember lying in the ward and this older mother (of many children) asking me why I wasn't able to keep my baby. I'd replied that I wasn't being allowed to, and that I'd nothing to give her. She replied that I could give her love....

Well said Elegran, perhaps in future generations we will be condemned for criticising girls who choose to have several children with different partners , divorce was at one time a scandal as was babies born to single mothers

I'm glad to say that, being as I was a wartime baby, and often, troops passing through small towns, were never heard of again, I'm pretty sure neighbours were very sympathetic and supportive. Different world.

The thing is, angie95 - Evelyn Home wasn't nasty. she was very kind and sensible and gave a lot of good advice, BUT that was the way of thinking at that time, and we are all a product of our times, as someone else has said. These girls would have known from the start that they would expose themselves to shame if they were "caught" and the prevailing attitude was that they had transgressed against the rules of society and deserved it.

It all goes back a long long way. A daughter was always a liability if her father had to keep her for her lifetime, but an asset if she could marry and form a family alliance. That worked from royalty marrying powerful noblemen down to a farmer who could see that his grandchildren would have the benefit when his son-in-law inherited the small farm next door as well as his own small acreage and they could farm a larger area. The future son-in-law wouldn't want someone else's child to provide for, so if his prospective bride produced one, her marriagable value dropped sharply.

This didn't matter so much if her family owned nothing but the clothes on their backs, and precious few of those, so the "peasant class" were less fussy - and more prolific.

It was accepted that a young man of property would sow a few wild oats, but, of course, they would not be sown in the field from which he would eventually choose a spotless bride with a dower or marriage portion with whom to raise legitimate heirs. He (or his father) would make arrangements for the upkeep of a bastard but their status, and thence of his mother, was lower than that of the "proper" family, as much for their social position as their lamentable morals. Royalty had a habit of keeping illegitimate children handy and well-maintained, but they could afford to - and might need them politically.

With the rise of the middle class, the gap between those who had something to hand on and those who had nothing filled up with those who had a bit and would like to have more - and the ways of the haves moved down the classes. The rise of Victorian morality made the practicality into morality

And so it was that "good" girls were seen as better than "easy" girls.

There are things that we are censorius about now, which previous generations would be amazed at us for being concerned about, and other things which we think are normal, but perhaps future generations will look back at us with scorn for accepting. Actual cruelty is to be abhorred, but is too easy to judge the standards of others in retrospect.

Ginny, I wonder if your MIL was commenting not on the unmarried mothers but on the fact that so many now seem to think it's quite normal to leave school, have a baby and then continue having another boyfriend, another baby ad infinitum. Any one can make a mistake but when some take it as a normal lifestyle it does rankle I'm afraid. My grand-niece has had one baby after another, never worked, but of course, with a bad back it must be difficult!!!

Thank you downtoearth.

That would have absolutely been my mother's attitude too angie
My sister was asked to be bridesmaid for a neighbour's daughter; after the wedding my mum found out that the bride was pregnant and hit the roof ?, she'd never have agreed had she known.
DM even stopped being friends with two people whose daughters were pregnant and not married.

Incredible to believe nowadays.

I was unmarried and pregnant in the early eighties. I was surprised to find that prejudice was alive and well in my working class family. My grandmother refused to let me go shopping with her in case she met someone she knew. My family practically frogmarched us down the aisle - a stereotypical 'shotgun wedding'. Thankfully my husband and I remain very happily married but I've never felt quite the same about my family since.

In the 1960s I worked with someone who was a few years older than me, a lovely, kind person but she was what was termed 'a bag of nerves'. She talked a great deal about her little brother. Eventually one of the other women told me that her brother was in fact her son; she had been allowed by her family to keep the baby but could not acknowledge him as hers. Nowadays it seems unkind and actually seems ridiculous because everyone seemed to know about it. He would have been born in the 1950s.

Good for you Marelli, I am so glad you were stubborn, and kept your baby. It is so sad, what women had to do, and so wrong, and cruel, my heart goes out to all who had to do this, Thank goodness, that times have changed!!
How nasty was Ms Home,, Bellanonna? Women wrote in, for help, not to be shown up, and accused of being selfish! If Ms Home knew the facts of life, then she should know that it takes two!!!! OOOH that makes my blood boil,, Rant over xxxx My little sister, fell pregnant at the age of sixteen, and my mother hit the roof, (she was with the father) and made her have an abortion. Now my sister is in her early forties, engaged, but no children, and she said she never would have any. I think deep down, she never really came to terms with having to have an abortion, I remember going to my parents( I had moved out) and my mother was crying , when I asked what the matter was, she replied, " Its your sister,she is pregnant. What will the neighbours say?" Not giving a thought to how my sister was feeling, all she cared about was the neighbours, and this was in the 80s!! It was all about how it made my mother look!

Wonder when this all started, it seems to be at a time when people became 'middle class' in the 19th century the aristocracy didn't have illegitimate children, they toured Europe instead ! And could afford a visit to Harley Street, the poor had their babies, the mothers went back to work and the grandparents brought up the child

My friend got pregnant in 1968 when she was 15. She confided in me, but I was sworn to secrecy. I begged her to let me tell my mum because she would have helped. My friend carried on as if it wasn't happening. Her parents must have realised when she got really big and they took her on a months holiday, so the neighbours wouldn't see. Then she was sent to a Mother and Baby unit until the birth. The baby was adopted and my friend has had no contact in all these years. Such a sad story.

I had my first two DD's 'out of wedlock'. DD1 was born in the UK and nobody really batted an eyelid, but when I had DD2 in Malta, I was treated as the lowest of the low. It was an awful experience and DD2's birth certificate had 'illegitimate' stamped across it in bright red ink, although this was arranged after DH and I were married.

My mother also had her first DD six years before she was married. We only discovered this when my sister was 60 and we were doing a bit of digging into the family history.
We felt we couldn't ask mother about it as she had kept her secret for so long, but I would love to know how she pulled it off.
My father was Canadian, married to someone else and it took him six years to sort himself out, but he did return to the UK to marry her. It was 1945 when many had no choice but to give up their babies, so I am very curious as to how mum managed.

A warm hug for you, too, down to earth. x

my DD who died 12 years ago left me her legacy E now 17 in 2 weeks, born 1999,I have just realised that she is illegitimate..

jing for your 14:05:59 post big hug xx

jing I think that's my point really. There must have been illegitimate children around me and I didn't know about it because of how well it was hidden. I can only think of one girl at secondary school who came from a single parent family and I thought her Mum was a widow. But I suspect that's because being at RC schools attached to churches, couples probably married young because that was the done thing if the girl got pregnant. As children we were never interested in wedding dates or anniversaries, so illegitimacy would never come up. It would take some malicious gossip or something. I can imagine families moving house and children changing schools to avoid people finding out.

My best friend's husband was adopted and left it until he was in his 50s and both his parents had died before trying to trace his biological parents. Finding his mother was quite easy because she still lived in the same house all those years later, but she didn't want to have anything to do with him. She'd never told her husband and family. She was in her 80s and I can only imagine how she felt being contacted after so many years. I wonder how many women who gave up babies for adoption lived in fear of being contacted about the adoption?

I am another who was illegitimate - my mother had me in a Mother & Baby Unit that was some 20 miles from her home town. I wasn't given up for adoption though, as my mother possibly thought that my father would change his mind about marrying her (he didn't and went to work abroad to underline that decision).
I spent my early baby days living with my uncle and his wife, who already had a couple of children. Then they had another one on the way, my mother got herself a residential job as a housekeeper, and I was put into a children's home.
My mother got pregnant again (she had enduring mental health problems ... not sure if this was present then or as a result of her erratic life) and that child was placed for adoption.
A couple of years down the line I had foster parents who wanted to adopt me but my mother had managed to find herself a husband and claimed me back again. She told me about my father but said she had married 'by proxy' via the telephone. As a youngster I believed what she told me and the penny only dropped when I was around 15, when I used the word 'illegimate' in casual conversation, only to be told to never to use it again.

I fostered babies in the late 60s and early 70s before the abortion act was passed. One baby came from a very good home but the mother's father would not let her keep her baby. At that time there was little help for her . She thought about long term fostering for the baby but gave in and had her adopted. I met the new parents and they were lovely and besotted by this bright baby. Other babies came from less well off homes .I got them at a week old until they were adopted at about two months . Many a tear was shed when they left .The abortion act made a huge difference to the amount of babies to be adopted .I would love to know what happened to my babies.

My paternal grandmother was an unmarried 18 yr old when she had my dad in 1915. She had been living in Liverpool and was shipped off to her step mothers sister in Leicester. She came from a "respectable family" and her father had worked his way up from an office boy to be chief cashier of a shipping company. In a awy
My father was left with foster parents who I think were found as the foster mother worked as a domestic in the same house as the step mothers sister.

My grand mother was sent back to Liverpool afterwards. When WW2 started she wrote to my father at what was his foster parents address and the letter was eventually sent on to him at his lodgings.

My Dad met up with his mum a few times as he stayed in Britain in a reserved occupation. They lost touch again I think when my grandmother married a Welsh man she had got to know well when staying nearby on several holidays.
I suspect that even in the late 1940s she would not have ever felt able to own up to having had an illegitimate child.

We are all products of our times JBF until we know better.

Illegitimate children used to go to great lengths to hide it from classmates. Or at least, this one did. And I hate myself for that now.

Wilma I was also brought up in a small Scottish village, attending the village school. I would also have asserted that there were no 'illegitimate' children in the school but having grown up and remained in the area I learned that things were slightly more complicated. I was born in 1946 so pupils further up the school were war-time babies and I think it was this fact that ensured that these children and their mothers were not condemned - rather regarded as 'casualties of war'. The cover stories were pretty thin eg. the woman (with one 20something Daughter in the Army), who suddenly produced a baby son when she was 50 y.o. The single woman who having been visiting her married sister for a few months, returned to bring up (allegedly) her sister's baby, because her sister had too many to cope with! However unlikely the villagers colluded and repeated these stories, by the time we realised that they could not be true it was old news and no one was bothered.

Some stories were more straightforward - fiancés killed in the war, Polish Soldiers who returned to Poland at war's end. Some young women simply claimed to be War Widows and wore a wedding ring.