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Old 05-06-2014, 02:55 PM
 
Location: San Francisco, California
1,949 posts, read 6,449,629 times
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by definition: a child born to unwed parents or out of wedlock

also known as a bastard child when the father doesnt claim or take responsibility

seems like there are a lot of people that were born in that type of situation and had a poor upbringing
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Old 05-06-2014, 03:09 PM
 
Location: Southern California
393 posts, read 1,494,440 times
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I don't consider myself either illegitimate or a bastard, but my birth parents weren't married to each other. Should I be ashamed of that? Why? The shame would be on those who would consider it shameful. I doubt most people use those terms anymore anyway. What difference does it make if a child's parents are married or not? If a couple gets divorced, does that make their children illegitimate? Labels...
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Old 05-06-2014, 03:13 PM
 
7,280 posts, read 10,917,839 times
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There is no such thing as illegitimate children.
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Old 05-06-2014, 03:15 PM
 
28,624 posts, read 18,677,825 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mr bolo View Post
by definition: a child born to unwed parents or out of wedlock

also known as a bastard child when the father doesnt claim or take responsibility

seems like there are a lot of people that were born in that type of situation and had a poor upbringing
Nobody cares about admitting to have had a child out of wedlock anymore. Acknowledgement is cheap these days.

As far as raising the child, that's a totally different question today from whether it's been acknowledged.
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Old 05-06-2014, 03:18 PM
 
Location: San Francisco, California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mack Knife View Post
There is no such thing as illegitimate children.
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The rate of illegitimate births in the United States has risen sharply since the early 1970s. In the 1940s fewer than five percent of the total births were out of wedlock. By the early 2000s, according to statistics compiled by the Center for Health Statistics at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department , births to unmarried mothers accounted for nearly one-third of all U.S. births.
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Old 05-06-2014, 04:36 PM
 
13,395 posts, read 13,457,370 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mack Knife View Post
There is no such thing as illegitimate children.
EXACTLY!! There is no such thing. A child was born. Being born doesn't make anyone illegitimate.

The parents may be out of order (if you so believe) but the child is innocent.

I was born to a single mom. No shame here.
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Old 05-06-2014, 04:59 PM
 
Location: The analog world
17,077 posts, read 13,318,841 times
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I don't think there's any shame in being born to a single mother, but I have to ask in what situation does one imagine this coming up in casual conversation?
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Old 05-06-2014, 05:19 PM
 
Location: Canada
7,668 posts, read 5,477,929 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by randomparent View Post
I don't think there's any shame in being born to a single mother, but I have to ask in what situation does one imagine this coming up in casual conversation?
I smiled when I read that. You're asking the question in a genealogy forum. When trying to trace ancestors it is absolutely relevant whether a person's surname came from their mother or their father.
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Old 05-06-2014, 05:19 PM
 
Location: Type 0.73 Kardashev
11,110 posts, read 9,770,079 times
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Right here! My parents weren't married when I was born!

Seriously, who cares?

The point is that whether or not they were married is no reflection on me. All it reflects is that they decided not to take part in a ritual and/or register their union with a state government.

Maybe the suggestion (in my case, a fact) that I wasn't planned is supposed to be a stigma? Not to me, it's not. Besides, lots of children born to married parents weren't exactly planned - even when the parents were married at the time of conception (I speak from experience here!). Big deal.

On a related side note, I used to work at the legal publishing company now known as West, proof-checking edited legal decisions for publication. West uses a system called KeyCite for categorizing decisions by topic (while still useful, this was critical before database searching via computer was possible). Anyway, one of the KeyCite categories was Children, Born Out of Wedlock - it was always followed in parentheses by the note 'before 1973, see Bastards'. As one, I always found that amusing.



Quote:
Originally Posted by randomparent View Post
I don't think there's any shame in being born to a single mother, but I have to ask in what situation does one imagine this coming up in casual conversation?
Yeah. There's that. Is there some place where this is a regular line of inquiry?
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Old 05-06-2014, 05:47 PM
 
31,387 posts, read 36,978,939 times
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What is an illegitimate child?
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